These are just a few of the faces who have walked into Lori Turpin’s office in Danville over the last decade. Turpin is the Hendricks County Veterans Service Officer. Her job is to be a county contact for Veterans Affairs, which means she spends a lot of her time connecting veterans with resources and assisting them with filing claims for military benefits

“I didn’t know a position like this existed until I actually started doing the work, and it has become a passion for me,” said Turpin.

As a retired Navy nurse and captain, the job is personal, and goes beyond government paperwork.

There are an estimated 10,000 veterans in Hendricks County. Turpin sees four or five a day. Their issues can range from homelessness to sexual trauma to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Outgoing and chatty, the 66-year-old typically has no trouble getting people to open up. She says the claims process can be complicated, but it actually works more often than people think.

“The idea that’s out there is that the VA only says no or you have to ask three or four times, it is kind of an urban myth. If you do it right the first time, if you put the claim in and give all the information they need, they’re probably going to say yes.”

For example, Turpin recently helped a Vietnam vet with hearing problems and a history of a heart attack get a hefty backlog check dating back to the 1990s after someone at a local post office recommended he “Go see Lori.”

“Being a nurse, I’m a caregiver. I feel like the folks that come in here, the veterans and their surviving spouses, they are like my patients. I just have to take care of them. That’s basically what I do.”

Turpin has been looking out for others most of her life. The oldest of four children living on a farm in Brownsburg, she was busy. Her dad, an Air Force man who worked for a telephone company, traveled often for work, so there was plenty to do.

“I think I had a lot of responsibility growing up. We were close (in age) and my mom had some health issues, so I think I probably started helping with anything,” she remembers.

As a teenager, she knew she wanted to be a nurse and was inspired by a mentor to pursue a career in the Navy, a choice that would shape much of her life. Turpin got a  scholarship to the University of Evansville and went on to serve 30 years of active duty as a Navy nurse.

She was deployed four times during those years, including seven months in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm where she learned to work out of a hospital tent with very little medical equipment.

“We had to do it by touch and hearing and with our eyes. We didn’t have a lot of machinery to take care of people,” she remembers.

In 2006, Turpin was back home in Hendricks County. She had been caring for her aging parents when she took on the role of service officer. At an age when many veterans consider retirement, Turpin took on a new job. And like most careers, it came with challenges.

“I think the hardest thing has been when the VA got really behind several years ago, just to tell people, it is okay, it’s going to happen and they just didn’t believe me. You are kind of holding your breath that it is going to happen,” she remembers.

Turpin says resources have improved and she describes the current funding as “generous.”

In 2016, Hendricks County received $33 million through VA for compensation and pension.

“They’ve been very generous since the Afghanistan war started. We have so many younger veterans and it’s been very good for the older veterans because it has opened up things like traumatic brain injury and PTSD.”

Today, many of the top concerns in Hendricks County are elderly low-income veterans who now face homelessness. She says there are programs through the VA, but they can run their course.

“For wartime veterans, I can help them apply for assisted living and make their money last longer., I do a lot of those applications.”

Turpin’s commitment to helping vets doesn’t stop at her desk. She’s involved in multiple organizations, including the American Legion Post 331 Brownsburg and the Indiana Blue Star Salute program that serves military members and their families.

“Anything that has to do with veterans, Lori is out front. She’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met in all the years of involvement as a volunteer for many organizations,” said Indiana Blue Star Salute Vice Chairman Ralph “Zoc” Zoccolillo, who has worked closely with Turpin for years.

“She’s a person that always, not just often, raises her hand when you need help in anything, especially when it involves our military, and our veterans and our veteran’s families,”

Whether she’s organizing a Christmas charity event, a Veteran’s Day ceremony, or trying to get a check for a disabled veteran, she’s working to help those who have served.

“It makes me feel good and it’s the same feeling I used to get when I was at the bedside of a patient and they got better, it’s just that kind of thing for me,” she said.