Veteran's Affairs Plus W/ David L. Washington

Wesley Knight 0:00
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Music 0:35
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Dave Washington 0:49
day Las Vegas. Good day Las Vegas. This is Veteran Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I'm Dave Washington, your host, and we have Miss Amy, and I'll let her pronounce her last name. We'll get her in shortly. Couple quick announcements. Certainly want to acknowledge the fact that we just had Memorial Day, and that is for all those veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice for for our freedoms in this country. So once again, want to express condolences for those families who are mourning people on that day and giving special attention to that day as we focus on those in remembrance again who made that ultimate sacrifice, birthdays in the month of May. Certainly want to acknowledge my granddaughter, destiny. I forget how old Destiny will be, but she's in her mid 30s now, and that says something about her grandpa, just getting on up there in age, but happy to be still kicking here with that, I'm going to bring Miss Amy on and Amy, would you give the proper pronunciation of your last name? And we are pleased to welcome you to Veterans Affairs plus 91.50 thank

Amy Wegel 2:03
you. Sure. It's an honor. Yes. My name is Amy Wagle, and I'm the Government Solutions director for zeal, zeal massage therapy. Okay,

Dave Washington 2:14
so, so you reside. You were telling me offline where

Amy Wegel 2:21
I'm in Central Florida. We're actually experiencing one of our pretty much to the day thunderstorms right now. So you happen to hear some thunder in the background, but yeah, I'm right. I'm in sunny Florida, sunny

Dave Washington 2:33
Florida. And yeah, are you a veteran?

Amy Wegel 2:39
I am not, but I am the proud spouse of a combat veteran. My husband, his name is Glenn. He served 15 years in the Army, and then additionally, I am pretty passionate about veteran advocacy. I do also volunteer as a mentor for ACP, which is a program if you're not aware there, they provide guidance to military folks who train, who are, like, transitioning from service into the corporate world. So, yeah, that military is kind of ingrained in my life, but I am not myself a veteran, okay?

Dave Washington 3:10
And your husband served in what branch again,

Amy Wegel 3:14
he was Army, 15 years army, okay? All right, yeah, okay.

Dave Washington 3:18
So tell us about a little bit about your business and what specifically can you do to assist veterans, if you would? Yeah,

Amy Wegel 3:27
sure. So I work for a company called zeal. We are a nationwide medical massage provider that's within the VA community care department. Many veterans, I don't know, maybe you did or didn't, but they're still completely unaware that the VA is approving medical massage therapy as a treatment option, which is amazing. There's no out of pocket for the veteran, no out of pocket expense. Just have to qualify and then, of course, have a valid referral. So it's really come a long way. There's a lot more VAs that are adopting to it in this day from when we started. We started about four years ago with the VA, and there's a lot of veterans suffering from chronic pain, so we do something a little different in that we actually provide medical massage therapy within the comfort of the veterans home. So that's a little bit of a new concept for the VA. We do have clinic locations also, but I will say about 80% of the veterans actually prefer the in home massage route. So it's great. And then and within about two years, maybe three we have actually completed over 150,000 treatments for veterans nationwide. We're at 82 VA medical centers. I know it's amazing. I'm so proud of that. And then additionally so for veterans that maybe don't qualify for MediCal massage, in terms of an actual referral from a doctor, we also provide a 20% Discount to all active duty military and veterans off of massages.

Dave Washington 5:03
So from your knowledge, would they have to have a beyond a certain medical benefits through VA or just a doctor, any medical doctor,

Amy Wegel 5:17
yeah, could refer them

just through your it's just through VA benefits, healthcare. And every VA operates a little differently in terms of who initiates the referral. Generally, it comes from Whole Health usually, but some VAs operate with like a pain clinic, so the referral initiates there. A lot come just directly from a PCP who is trying to help the veteran who's suffering from chronic pain. So it's just an additional kind of something that the veteran could be combated with, in addition to, like, you know, perhaps yoga there's, there's a bunch of different holistic things that the VA is offering right now, and a lot of veterans are completely unaware. They're doing tai chi, mindfulness, yoga, acupuncture. It's wild,

Dave Washington 6:07
excellent, if it's helpful, something that people should pursue. And hopefully we have a number of our listening audience members, those veterans out there that will take heed. And let me ask you this, is there a location in the state of Nevada, particularly in the Las Vegas Valley area. Do you know

Amy Wegel 6:27
there is Yeah, so we integrate with the VA in every state. So all VAs were approved to provide medical massage therapy. It's up to the VA, kind of specifically, state by state, how they choose to operate and send referrals. But we are, my company, zeal is authorized and approved to provide care everywhere. So we do have massage therapists in Nevada. I know we're operating for sure out of the Reno area, the Reno VA. I know we had some interest in Las Vegas. I don't think we're fully activated yet there, but we certainly could be. So it's great.

Dave Washington 7:08
So it may, it may not necessarily be a stand up physical structure building, but it could be individual therapists who are certified, classified, etc, etc, by VA that they could make and do this contact work with a veteran in the Las Vegas Valley?

Amy Wegel 7:27
Sure, yeah. So our so we do have some clinics that a veteran can travel to, and that just varies state by state, but in terms of our in home massage therapy, we have 1000s of massage therapists across the country, so that's kind of what happens on the it's a little more advanced on what happens after the veteran gets a referral, but essentially they the VA Medical Center meets with me and my team, and we educate them on where we can provide coverage for their veterans. Our in home massage therapists will travel though. So we might have a massage therapist that can travel, you know, up to an hour across a city. So they might go on all sides of Las Vegas, for example.

Dave Washington 8:11
Okay, so your job, you really kind of helped to bridge the gap between a therapist as well as a veteran.

Amy Wegel 8:22
Yeah, I work more specifically with the VA Medical Center. So if a VA Medical Center is interested in understanding how they can send their veterans to us, it's really my my role is to help, kind of educate them. But I also work with a large team of folks at zeal, a great group of folks that some of them do specifically work with, our massage therapists. Some of them do work specifically with our veterans. We have a whole patient care team that schedules. It's a mighty, mighty machine behind the scenes.

Dave Washington 8:56
All right. Well, that's great news. Now, let me ask you this, is there any type of website or means for them, say, for example, who someone who may be listening to today, could make contact with you, or through some organization that they can figure out how to at least make applications see if they actually meet the requirements to become will become a client, to be one who would get the massages? Yeah,

Amy Wegel 9:25
I'd say for anybody interested to understand more about just any questions in general about VA massage through zeal in home. The website is called, or is zeal.com backslash VA. So it's, I always phonetically spell it out because it's a little bit hard to say over the phone. It's Zulu, echo, echo, lima.com, backslash VA, and that will give you kind of a starting point on any questions you might have.

Dave Washington 9:53
Okay, that's great. All right, so give us some closing remarks on anything that you think. May be helpful to any veteran out there, male, female, black, white, you name it, that may be trying to get some help in this area. What do you see other than the website, which is very important for sure, but give us some closing remarks to our listening audience, sure.

Amy Wegel 10:18
I think I will end by saying that we feel so honored. This is such rewarding work, truly and so we feel really honored to be providing care for veterans. But if you're okay with it, I thought maybe I could leave you with a quote from one of our veteran patients, sure. Okay, so quote, I cannot say enough about the incredible, impact massage therapy has had on my health and overall well being. After just a few sessions with my massage therapist, I'm feeling noticeably better, sleeping more deeply and moving with the freedom I haven't felt in years. The Chronic tension in my shoulders and hips has eased. My posture has improved, and I finally feel an improvement in my fibromyalgia, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too. So I guess I'll close and say this is really, truly been an honor. It's been great to meet you. I really appreciate the opportunity, and hopefully we'll be seeing more of the Las Vegas veterans very soon, and helping all right, helping treat them

Dave Washington 11:19
all right. This is Veterans Affairs plus on 91.5 jazz and more. We just had Miss Amy waggle, yeah, and we're pleased to have had you. And thank you so very much.

Amy Wegel 11:30
Thank you. Have a great day. You too.

Dave Washington 11:39
Once again, this is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I'm Dave Washington, your host, and I have a young man waiting on the line until I make a few announcements that I haven't seen until the other day with his pops, one of my greatest supervisors, Chief John. We call him Jr John Ryan, so we will be talking with his son Rick, here shortly. So Las Vegas. I just want to say that this month is my wife and I 53rd I believe it is, and I know she's going to say, What do you mean? You think Third? Third, 53rd wedding anniversary. I love my wife, and she has helped me through this journey with cancer, for sure. And in fact, next week, we're going to have Mujahid Ramadan and and John rose on the show. These are two guys who have coached me there cancer survivors as well, and they did a lot to help me out and just dealing with the whole issue. And you know, when you have people that you can talk to about something that and each of one of our journeys are individual journeys. However, I just, I'm a firm believer, you get other folks involved. They they really help you from getting down and starting moping and feeling sorry for yourself. So they keep these guys have kept me energized over the past 1214, months. So I love both of them, and we're going to have them on on the show for next week. However, at this time, Rick Ryan, he's a Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Naval Criminal Investigative Services. My wife, Marcia used to love in CIS I got into it a little bit. But when they start moving all over the world, she's like but you know what? We're gonna get some background on that from Rick that really shed some light on why that is the case and should be the case, quite frankly. So as I was saying, Rick used to run around the training center grounds being a grip for, for former Air Force captain who used to do a lot, I think they were doing. It wasn't called, was it video? What do they call it? Rick, yep. Lean it on video, it was, it was video, yes, sir, yeah. Okay, all right. Rick, so give our listening audience a little bit about your background, if you would. Oh,

Rick Ryan 14:03
hey, I appreciate it for having me on so I've recently retired, and I have about 29 years of experience in law enforcement from local law enforcement in two states, State of Texas and state of Nevada, and then full 20 year career with the United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which moved me six different times. I've been in six different homes about four different countries, and I've had an amazing, amazing experience and ride, and extremely fulfilling getting the opportunity to help protect the service members of the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps and their families. Do

Dave Washington 14:48
you know that, up until you mentioned it when we had breakfast last week, I assume you were a military veteran, and I assume, yeah, I assume, because. It mentioned naval I assume that that that folks who are in that department are former military people, and you say that is not the case. So explain to our listening audience again about background and what kinds of things that are required to assume that type of a role.

Rick Ryan 15:19
Great, great questions. So the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, NCIS is a civilian led agency. We have a civilian director who answers through his chain of command to the Secretary of the Navy. So we don't have any military ranking personnel in our chain of command. The vast majority of all of our agents are civilian now that doesn't mean that they don't come to NCIS with a military background of some type, either having been commissioned in one of the services or enlisted. It just means that when we assume our roles as NCIS special agents, the vast majority, and I'm talking over 95% of our agents, are all civilian agents, comparable in government rating and training to FBI agents, Secret Service agents, ATF agents, HSI agents, we all go to basically the same training, and then we'll just get an add on block that's special to whatever agency that we're going to be working for. So

Dave Washington 16:20
civilian led, sir. So can you share with where you guys say, the majority of your training and indoctrinate, indoctrination into this field of work? Is there a particular place that you go?

Rick Ryan 16:32
There is, there is, so you know, to get hired within CIS generally, you have to have a bachelor's degree and have to have some experience along with it. Once you get hired, and if you get selected, you go down to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which is down in Brunswick, Georgia, and it's about a six month long Academy. You live in Brunswick, Georgia, during that six months prior to assuming your first first field job out in one of our residents, resident agencies around the world.

Dave Washington 17:00
Wow, that is something totally, totally unaware. So me and Marcia was talking the other day, and I say, Marsha, do you know I thought that folks came were military folks. That was, that was the attachment, and found out that, no, it is not. But anyway, I failed to ask her to give me a couple questions for you, but I'll say this once again, me. Dave Washington, thought that it was a military attachment, and the things that are done in the training that you go through really helps and prepares you in a total of six months overall training to be certified to do this work.

Rick Ryan 17:42
That's correct and that that doesn't count. The training that you had, from whatever experience you bring, you bring into our agency, we have individuals that come to work with NCA is as an agent, that have their PhDs. Some of them have their juris doctorates. Some of them come in like myself with nine years of police experience, and so the agency has a foundation of just diverse training and diverse agents that come in and strengthen the capabilities of these agents to operate worldwide, in war zone, aboard ships and like that.

Dave Washington 18:22
So some of your work is actually aboard a ship. Yeah, that's

Rick Ryan 18:27
correct. So the jurisdiction of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services pretty much any felony investigation or crime that occurs against the Department of the Navy or its personnel, or its personnel, it includes counterintelligence investigations and counterterrorism investigations. We partner with all of the agencies around the globe to counter all of those, those concerns. Every carrier that we have currently deployed, even in in shipyards, has an NCIS agent assigned because, you know, remember, you have more than 5000 people give or take on a carrier any given time. And that's, that's a small city in itself, so you need an agent aboard to take care of all those issues. And then there's agents in every single port that a ship's going to pull in to provide all of the support that I mentioned to those those ships and those personnel coming in, keeping them safe. So yeah, we are global. When the agency describes it's a global agency, it's literally a global agency. We're in 191 locations, 41 countries and and that doesn't include all of the ships and carriers and stuff like that that we're on.

Dave Washington 19:42
Man, that is really, really something. And you said you have been to how many different deployments, I guess you guys call it deployment, yeah,

Rick Ryan 19:51
so I have been in, let's see, I think six different offices. I started in Seattle, in the Seattle area. I was there for a few years. I did a tour in Iraq. While I was assigned in that area, I deployed to Iraq Oh 708, and when I got back, I was home for about a year or so, and then transferred to Japan. I was stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, just just south of Tokyo, Japan. And also while in Japan, covered down in Hong Kong. So I was traveling to Hong Kong, special administrative region of China at that time, on and off for about six months. During that tour, came back to Quantico, Virginia, which is where our headquarters is. I did a tour of headquarters, then transferred over to our tactical team. We have a tactical team that covers all operations within the United States that are high risk. I did that for a few years, and then my last two assignments was one was down in Jacksonville, Florida for about five years. Great tour, great weather. I think I wore a coat three times.

Stationed back up in Quantico, I was assigned to Crystal City in the Pentagon as a senior representative to the Department of the Navy. So

Dave Washington 21:07
Quantico is more FBI police type change. So do you guys do any training there at all at Quantico? We

Rick Ryan 21:14
don't. Quantico is predominantly the base. Obviously, it's Marine Corps Base. They have a lot of Marine Corps officer training that goes on there. The FBI Academy is on Quantico as well as the DEA Academy. So we don't actually have any one of any one of our school houses on Quantico, but we have a training facility on Quantico for just like in service type training that we conduct for our folks in the National Capital Region. We work closely with both of those agencies, great partnerships up there. There's a ton of federal agencies up there in that National Capital Region. So we get, we get the breadth of experience with working with our partners.

Dave Washington 21:57
Excellent. So you were born and raised in Las Vegas, right?

Rick Ryan 22:00
I was, I was born and raised in Las Vegas.

Dave Washington 22:04
So where'd you go? Where'd you go to? High school? I went to Bonanza High School. Okay, yeah, interesting.

So how did you and why did you decide that you know what I'm going to try? NCIS,

Rick Ryan 22:18
yeah, a lot of people ask me that question in my travels. So I was police officer in Arlington, Texas. I loved my job there. While I was there, I actually made it onto the full time Special Operations SWAT team, and I was working there while I was there, during my time on the SWAT team, September 11 occurred, and you can recall most of us know exactly where we were when that occurred, when that happened, I remember where I was at, yes, and I remember it. It kind of shaking me to my core of you know where, where can I best serve the citizens of the United States and the people that that I love in this country that I hold dear. So at that time, I had the opportunity to work with the Joint Terrorism Task Force out of Dallas. We helped them on a couple of their investigations, and I was intrigued by the the global scale of what they were working on, and the kind of stuff they were doing. And that piqued my interest, which led me into finding out more about the federal agencies. And I kind of steered towards NCIS. I liked I liked the mission. I liked the fact that they were a global agency. I wasn't necessarily going to be working just in the United States. I would have the availability to be to have jurisdiction all over the world, as long as it was connected to the Navy or the Marine Corps.

Dave Washington 23:35
So as far as not to cut you off, but as far as family, do you if you're married, do you get to bring them to an assignment that's outside of the country, or that's something that you do alone as an agent?

Rick Ryan 23:48
It depends on the location. Obviously, went from Iraq during that time, my family didn't come with me. There are the vast majority of assignments that we come to the agency, and the Department of the Navy is well prepared to facilitate families to travel with you and live with you. For example, when I was in Japan, we lived on a housing facility that was run by the Department of the Navy, so my townhome was right next to a navy chief's townhome right next to some other enlisted folks and my kids grew up with their kids and and so yeah, absolutely, that's part of the that's part of the benefit that comes with our global travel. Is not only do I get that experience, but my family members and my child, they got the experience to my son, gosh, he probably has more fly miles than I do at this point.

Dave Washington 24:40
So what's your degree in?

Rick Ryan 24:46
So I got a degree in criminal justice, not a bad degree. I just would caveat it with NCIS and other federal law enforcement agencies and even local law enforcement agencies they're going to teach. Teach you what they want you to know about law enforcement when you come in. And so while criminal justice isn't a bad degree, because it definitely gives you a breadth of knowledge on the criminal justice a language degree is absolutely not any type of degree that just gives you some of those extra talents and capabilities when you join in as a benefit. Accounting is a great one. Forensic Science is a good one. Psychology isn't a bad one. I would stress the languages you know, any in the Middle Eastern languages, any of the Chinese dialects, Spanish is a one, you know, all of those languages that just makes you more well rounded, holistic talent of an agent. That's kind of what we're looking for. Okay,

Dave Washington 25:50
we got about another three and a half minutes or so. So are there any career opportunities that exist at this stage of and I know you just walked out the door, but there must be some vacancies somewhere. And are they? There must be various types of positions within that agency.

Rick Ryan 26:08
Yeah, so good question. They just closed the hiring announcement for Special Agent and that jump series in the government's called the GS 1811 they just closed. It was open for about five days. It'll open again. The best way to check on that is USA jobs.gov or the NCIS website, which is ncis.navy.mil that's the best way to get in there. You can see when those announcements come out, we hire professional staff. We hire basic investigators. So we have a lot of retired police officers that come on as basic investigators, and they're static, so they're not required to move all over the globe. So we have a ton of different jobs. Best way to do is check the NCS website, check USA jobs.gov, and and when those announcements come out, also LinkedIn on social media, impaired, basically. But I do know LinkedIn is a great place if you follow the agency to see when jobs do come available. And was a great, great tour, great place to work lot of people. And you get to literally travel the world and and take care of our service members, men and women that that are serving this great country, right?

Dave Washington 27:20
This is Veterans Affairs, plus on 91.5 jazz and more. We have Rick Ryan. He is a retired Agent with the CSI. So give us some closing remarks and anything that you would recommend a person do, and you covered some in this last minute and a half that we got to go, if you would, yeah, so

Rick Ryan 27:41
I want to appreciate the opportunity we the agency is looking for, for people from all different walks of life. That's where the strength of the agency comes from. We do, they do require a college degree, but you know, background education is one thing, experience combined with education is going to make a person a great candidate to come, come to the agency. And there's a bunch of good agencies out there. This one in particular I just I fell in love with, and I'm very blessed to have been had the opportunity to serve our men and women that are in the Department of the Navy, specifically the Navy and the Marine Corps around the globe, even them and their families safe. And if anybody's interested in that kind of kind of work, the Army does it, the Air Force does it. I'm just particular to the one that I served with, which was the NCIS. Sure they gave me a great opportunity, and I would never discourage from anyone, from from from going that same path.

Dave Washington 28:36
All right. Well, Rick, it's been a pleasure, man, your dad did a good job in getting you prepared, and we appreciate your service that protecting our our military folks as well as the rest of us civilians out here. So Young man, you're welcome at this this call in, or one day you come back to town, we'll get you in the studio. So Wes has given me that look. So hey, thank you, Rick. This is Veterans Affairs, plus On 91.5 jazz and more. Hey,

Music 29:20
all the smoke in the air till the hate when they stare, all the pain that we bear.