Spokane veterans finding homes: Cody Thueringer raises 11-year-old daughter in Spokane Valley

Cody Thueringer’s 11-year-old daughter, Genesis, is proud of her paper dragons.

“She’s like a waitress,” Thueringer, 44, said recently in his three-bedroom apartment, as Genesis brought in some examples from her room. “She’s like, ‘What do you want?’ ”

“They’re puppets,” Genesis said, proudly displaying the dragon opening and closing its paper maw.

The family has lived in this Spokane Valley apartment for five years, after Thueringer initially graduated out of the Veterans Affairs’ supportive housing program administered in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program is known as HUD-VASH.

A decade ago when Genesis was just an infant, the pair were homeless, jumping from campsite to campsite in northeastern Washington.

“I would make sure I was there, and pick her up, and we would go live in a tent,” Thueringer said.

Thueringer has images on his phone of Genesis, in a stroller, sitting at a campfire at the Bowl and Pitcher campground in Riverside State Park. The father still remembers nights when thunderstorms rolled through the woods, up the Columbia River near a different campsite in Stevens County.

“She’s knocked out on an air mattress, and you know, I’m spending all night long, the wind’s blowing the tent over and I’m trying to tie it to things,” Thueringer said, mimicking his panic to find shelter for his daughter.

As for many around Thueringer’s age, the path to that campsite began with the towers falling on Sept. 11, 2001. A wildland firefighter in California, where he’s from, Thueringer was fighting fires in Florida when America was attacked.

“9/11 kind of changed the trajectory, there,” he said. Thueringer contacted the American Red Cross after watching the attack, having been trained in rescues in confined spaces, and he was shortlisted to report to Manhattan to assist. But those orders were canceled.

Thueringer returned to California, and signed up for the Air Force after the U.S. invaded Iraq.

“I was just like, you know, I have skills. Let me go put my skills to use over there,” he said.

Thueringer was sent to Okinawa as a medic. He would treat patients coming off the front line during combat in the Middle East and heading back to the United States for treatment.

He also performed medical care for civilian contractors working on the island, which is where he traces his trauma. A call came in around 3 a.m. of a man who’d been pushed down the stairs and sustained a traumatic head injury. CPR was reported in progress.

But when Thueringer and his medical team showed up, no one was giving compressions.

“On my civilian side, going to a scene like that, hindsight’s 20/20, I probably would have pronounced him dead,” Thueringer said. “But I wasn’t given that opportunity.”

Thueringer told the story of loading the man into an ambulance and “holding his head together” as they rushed to the hospital. His daughter sat on the couch, taking in the story. He’s talked to her about the event, he said, and she admits she asks him about it most nights to understand why her dad had trouble sleeping.

It was the recurring dream of arriving at the hospital, covered in blood, and having a doctor suggest that because Thueringer had not secured the man’s neck, he’d died en route to the hospital.

“I think that was just his lack of experience, and emotional response to what I just wheeled in to his ER,” Thueringer said.

It would take years, and prolonged exposure therapy to the cervical collar the doctor accused Thueringer of neglecting, that would make the nightmares of that evening go away, he said.

“I spent years, years, years, in my dream, looking for a C-collar,” Thueringer said, wiping away the tears that come freshly years later.

That was part of the counseling he received as part of the wraparound services offered by the Spokane VA. Once Thueringer had received housing through the HUD-VASH program, he started counseling and home visits with Genesis to help him get back on his feet.

“You can’t handle both of these at the same time. You can’t handle, wondering where you’re going to stay that night, and then go into a therapy session and be open and honest,” Thueringer said.

That’s why the local VA focuses on housing first, and then assisting each client who comes into the office, said Shannon Dunkin, homeless program manager for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs in Spokane. Each person receives a clinical assessment that determines what types of services they need, beyond just a roof over their heads.

“Once we can kind of get that piece of the veteran’s circumstances handled, we can address the reasons that either led to the person’s homelessness, or make it challenging to sustain housing,” she said.

After leaving the Air Force, Theuringer was completing the Army’s Special Operations Preparatory Course. He broke his ankle during a final exercise before he graduated, and was medically retired from the military at 40% disability.

Thueringer went to live with Genesis’s mom in Stevens County, but the two split and the courts became involved. Genesis still lives with her mother part time. Thueringer was turned out by his dad and became homeless, disabled and with a daughter who was not yet 1 in his custody every weekend.

As winter approached, he saw a sign on U.S. Route 395. It informed him of housing and other services available to veterans at risk of homelessness. And most importantly, they would provide the necessary paperwork to get his benefits rolling.

Within weeks, he and Genesis were in an apartment. Home visits by case managers, part of the HUD-VASH program, were welcome, Thueringer said.

“It wasn’t like a military inspection,” he said. “It was very personable.”

In those visits, he learned how to be a father, and with counseling from the VA, he realized he needed more assistance then he’d initially been approved for.

“That ‘suck it up’ attitude, was just not working very well,” he said. “It was just me having to be willing to address my issues, and be honest with myself.”

That led to an increase in his disability support, and his move into a bigger place for himself and his daughter.

But now, half of his monthly income is already going to rent. A 5% increase is coming in June after his complex was bought by an out-of-state management company last year, Thueringer said. He’s off the housing assistance program, but if the cost of living keeps going up, he and Genesis may have to downsize, and give up the space for the craft table where she folds her paper dragons.

“She’s definitely the priority,” Thueringer said of his daughter. “She’s why I do what I do.”

The company raised the month-to-month rate for his unit significantly, meaning that even if Thueringer wanted to find another place to live, he wouldn’t be able to afford his current lodgings while looking. The rent increases and current state of the market, he said, makes him feel “locked in” to where he’s currently living. While he has some wiggle room in his budget, Thueringer said, he worries about his fellow tenants and their own ability to pay to live.

Just behind his apartment complex is a homeless camp. Across the street, he sees signs for vacant rental units, priced above what people like him can afford. There he is, right in the middle – and facing a future that includes either an increase in his cost of living or a need to leave. He’s hoping to avoid the scenario where he wasn’t secure in his housing, because he knows what that’s like and how it hindered his ability to deal with his own mental health.

“That was a rough time, just to think about being in it, is just emotional – too much,” Thueringer said. While he hopes he doesn’t have to return to that life, “I’m not confident that it won’t,” he said.