PHX Reporter

University of Phoenix issued the following announcement on Oct. 27.

“The cure is always painful; relief is always temporary. We are a relief-seeking culture writ large.”

This may sound cynical but, like most of what Jake Clark says, there’s a wisdom to it that stays with you. Some of Clark’s sagacity stems from his experience founding and operating Save A Warrior™, an organization that helps military veterans and first responders cope with complex post-traumatic stress and suicidal ideation. Some of it comes from his own extensive life experience as a soldier, a police detective and a special agent for the FBI.

But more important than the “how” or the “why” of this University of Phoenix (UOPX) alumnus’ insight is the way he applies it to transform the lives of military veterans — and perhaps even his own along the way.

Defying a legacy

By Clark’s own admission, his success is a surprise. His childhood was fraught with instability. He spent two and a half years in an orphanage when his parents couldn’t care for him. He spent weekends visiting his mother in mental institutions when she was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia. And, according to Clark, his adverse childhood experiences (ACE) score is “like a 9 out of 10.” (For those unfamiliar with the ACE study, a higher score correlates with more trauma and greater likelihood of health problems in adulthood.)

Clark’s is a sobering history. 

Not surprisingly, demons followed him into adulthood. “My entire life strategy was organized around self-hatred,” Clark explains. He struggled with addiction and codependency even as his professional life followed an upward trajectory. 

Clark’s resumé, for example, has some impressive highlights. He joined the U.S. Army right out of high school, and he worked as a Secret Service officer, police officer and, later, criminal investigator in Los Angeles. After 9/11, he reenlisted in the California Army National Guard and was deployed to Kosovo, where he saw firsthand what it means for a society to recover from a genocidal conflict.

His resumé doesn’t include everything, though. There was, for example, his commitment to education. He went back to school to earn his bachelor’s degree from UOPX while he was working for the LAPD.

Then there was the time when he worked as a security detail for a certain A-list actor.

But perhaps most importantly, there was his encounter with a childhood acquaintance, a woman whose son had joined the military, deployed to Afghanistan and was accused of significant misconduct during his tour. The mother reached out to Clark for help.

“The reason I felt compelled to extend myself was that she had kind of involved me from the beginning,” Clark says. He admits that guilt fueled part of his response: He had been unkind to the mother when they had been kids, and he wanted to make amends.

He met with the son and, despite the gravity of the accusations, Clark felt compassion for him. “I remember what it was like being 19 years old and that immature.”

The birth of a servant leader

The meeting with the young soldier dovetailed with Clark’s experiences in Kosovo and an alarming suicidal trend he noticed among returning veterans. The number of veteran suicides reported is staggering: Approximately 18 veterans commit suicide daily, which is 1.5 times the national average.

All of this clicked for Clark, who traces his interest in mental health back to his childhood experience with his mother’s illness.

Original source can be found here.