It's been three decades since Greg Duchsherer returned home from the Vietnam War, but lately he's been seeing something familiar in the faces of soldiers coming back from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"When they come home, they're still looking at the ground, jumping at every pothole," said Duchsherer, a Marine Corps veteran who lives in West Covina. "They're scared, and they don't want to admit they're scared, but you can smell the fear in them."

He knows, because he lived with the fear, too.

"You're stuck in combat mode," Duchsherer said. "You have trouble sleeping, trouble eating.

"My job was to kill or be killed. I was ready for that. ... But here in the work force, that mentality becomes an even bigger problem."

Duchsherer was among about 15 veterans who turned out to an Aug. 27 informational seminar at the American Legion post in West Covina to learn more about job opportunities, career training, housing services and health care available to help veterans get on their feet and stay there.

The seminar was sponsored by LA Works, a one-stop work source center based in Irwindale that draws upon partnerships with dozens of separate agencies to create a network of support under one roof.

"There's a lot of issues we're finding that veterans have to deal with to add a job into the mix," said Maureen Lynch, a spokeswoman for LA Works.

The organization is constantly working to evaluate area veterans' needs, she said, which can range from a lack of job skills or financial hardship to transportation issues or legal problems.

"Based on the information we hear, we'll try to load up on people who can address that topic," Lynch said. "If we find out there are a lot of veterans having fatherhood issues, that will be a focus of the next session."

At the most recent seminar, veterans from throughout the San Gabriel Valley were able to interact with representatives from a number of agencies, including the state Employment Development Department, the Department of Rehabilitation and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.

Walnut resident Jonas Halili, an Air Force veteran who served in the Gulf War, said he arrived at the seminar hoping to find out more about housing assistance, job training and medical benefits. And, at the end of the five hours, he said he had learned about many programs of which he plans to take advantage.

"A lot of veterans don't get the information they need to access these services," Halili said. "I would like to see more programs like this in high-traffic areas."

Marine Corps veteran Andy Gonsalves of West Covina said he first learned about the wide range of benefits available to veterans while he was incarcerated in the Los Angeles County jail system.

The jail outreach program, a partnership of the VA GLAHS and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, works to connect inmates who are veterans with the transitional housing, health care, mental health treatment and vocational rehabilitation they will need upon release.

Gonsalves, who has been in and out of jail three times since 2005, said the program is "very good," but that finding work has thus far been an insurmountable hurdle - one he hoped to scale with job leads from the seminar.

"The first thing on every application is `Have you ever committed a crime?"' Gonsalves said. "They never look past that."

For Duchsherer, the biggest obstacle preventing him from landing a steady job has been transportation, he said.

"I can get jobs all day long, but I can't get to them," he said. "Something so simple as to get up and go to work for eight hours a day - it gets so complicated."

Even with a bad knee, Duchsherer relies on a bike to get around, and he said he has found public transportation to be unreliable and too time-consuming for daily commuting.

These struggles - coupled with low income and housing worries - have been "embarrassing" and an "indignation," he said.

"When you get out (of the service), you're sitting on top of the world," Duchsherer said. "You're in your uniform, and you feel like the world is wide open for you. But then the door closes."

Lynch of LA Works said that, while members of the military typically are briefed on veterans benefits while they are still on active duty, the onslaught of information can be overwhelming.

Others think they won't need any assistance or put off visiting a VA representative for too long, said Clinton Carver of the EDD.

But a wealth of aid programs exist for veterans who have the resources and persistence to tap into them.

Elisa Zaccarino, an Azusa resident, is among those in the San Gabriel Valley working to ensure that those kinds of programs remain active and well-funded.

Zaccarino organized an Aug. 23 benefit at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8070 in Azusa to support the VFW's National Military Services programs.

The money raised will go directly to the VFW, which runs several programs that fund farewell and welcome-home gatherings for military units; provide pre-paid phone cards to active troops and veterans; and give grants to service members who are experiencing financial hardship.

The effort was an intensely personal one for Zaccarino, she said, not just because she gets to know a lot of veterans in her work as a bartender at the VFW post. Her father served in World War II, her brother in Vietnam and her son, a soldier in the Army National Guard, will likely be deployed soon to Iraq or Afghanistan.

"When a veteran comes home and he can't work or his financial bills skyrocket, that's the kind of situation we want to help," Zaccarino said. "We need to be there to support them."

"I did see what happened to my brother when he got back from Vietnam, and I see these vets today that are still struggling," she added. "I sure would hate to see the same thing happen to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans."

For more information about the VFW, visit www.vfw.org.

For more information about LA Works, visit www.laworks.org or call (626) 960-3964.

evelyn.barge@sgvn.com

(626) 962-8811, Ext. 2472

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