️ A Note From the Friend Helping Organize This

“Patrice has spent her entire adult life serving others — first as a soldier, then as a legal advocate for families and vulnerable communities. What she experienced at NDS had life-changing consequences. She is strong, resilient, and determined to rebuild, but she should not have to do it alone. Patrice deserves safety, dignity, and the chance to heal and get back on her feet. Please help us support her the way she has supported so many.”

Patrice never imagined that after serving her country and dedicating her legal career to helping others, she would be fighting for her own basic survival here at home. She is a Black disabled U.S. Army veteran and paralegal who built her life around justice, advocacy, and protecting vulnerable people. Today, she urgently needs support and a chance to rebuild the stability that was taken from her.

A Veteran Who Dedicated Her Life to Service

Patrice served as a paralegal in the U.S. Army, including a year-long deployment to Kuwait with time in Iraq. When she returned in 2018, she began facing the long-term effects of service-connected PTSD and ADHD. Reintegration into civilian life was not easy. She navigated hypervigilance, anxiety, sleep challenges, and the invisible work of trying to “hold it together” in everyday environments. Still, she pushed forward because serving others was core to who she was.

She continued her public service commitment in law school aftereward, doing public-interest legal work to support families in crisis, survivors, and marginalized communities. She showed up for people who felt unseen — even while privately managing her own wounds from military service.

⚠️ What Happened at NDS

In 2024, Patrice joined Neighborhood Defender Service (NDS) in New York City, believing she had found a workplace aligned with her values. NDS is known for its social-justice mission, and Patrice believed she’d finally found a team that understood equity, compassion, and trauma-informed care.

But when she requested a reasonable disability accommodation for her PTSD, she did not receive support. Instead, the situation escalated, and the outcome was devastating: she lost her job in a way that felt like retaliation for speaking up about her needs.

This wasn’t just a job loss — it was the moment everything collapsed at once.

How One Event Triggered a Downward Spiral

For many veterans with PTSD, losing even one source of stability — income, housing, healthcare, or community — can trigger a rapid decline. That is what happened to Patrice.

After losing her job, Patrice faced eviction, financial collapse, and disruptions in mental-health care. The stress intensified her PTSD symptoms. She found herself without family support to rely on and limited resources to keep herself afloat. She doesn’t have stable housing and accepted a small temporary shared room offered by someone she just met from a crisis-support program she entered to cope with what she experienced. She is currently living out of bags, unsure if she will have to leave the next day. No veteran should ever experience that.

️ Why This Isn’t Just One Person’s Story

Patrice’s experience reflects a much larger systemic issue affecting countless veterans with PTSD. Many face major barriers when returning to civilian life — from reintegration challenges and strained support networks to workplaces that are not trauma-informed and fail to provide basic accommodations. When one source of stability collapses, such as employment or housing, the impact can snowball quickly: mental-health care is disrupted, symptoms worsen, relationships become strained, and seeking help becomes harder. This cycle pushes far too many veterans into housing instability or homelessness every year.

Patrice’s situation follows this same preventable pattern: losing her job after requesting support set off a rapid chain reaction of housing loss, interrupted care, and declining stability. Her story represents a system that consistently fails the very people who served it. No veteran should have to endure this just for asking for help.

Luna: A Lifeline, Not a Luxury

Two weeks into that temporary stay, Patrice was able to bring home Luna, her psychiatric service dog — a one-year-old Yorkiepoo trained to interrupt panic attacks, provide grounding, and support daily functioning. Luna has been a lifeline, offering emotional stability during a crisis no veteran should face alone. She is not a pet — she is essential support for Patrice’s disability.

How Your Support Will Help Patrice Rebuild

Your support will help Patrice:

• Secure safe, stable housing

to avoid shelter placement, which is unsafe and destabilizing for PTSD

• Restore consistent medical & mental-health care

including therapy and treatment interrupted when she lost insurance

• Meet basic living needs while she works to regain employment

so she can survive long enough to rebuild stability

• Care for Luna, her service dog

including food, vet care, and required service-dog support needs

• Maintain stability while slow legal and union processes continue

because accountability systems take time, and she needs support now

✨ You Can Help Change the Outcome

No veteran who served this country should face homelessness or instability for asking for help. If you are able, please donate. Any amount helps provide Patrice with safety, stability, and a path to rebuild her life. And if you cannot give, sharing this page with a personal note truly makes a difference.

Thank you for reading, for caring, and for helping Patrice reclaim her life with dignity.