MANSFIELD — Korey Kaufman knows the problems military veterans face when they return home.
The U.S. Marine Corps veteran has lived through those issues since returning home wounded from the second “Battle of Fallujah” in 2004, the bloodiest battle of the war in Iraq.
According to published reports, 110 coalition forces were killed and 600 wounded in the battle. Some 3,000 insurgents were killed or captured. An unknown number of civilians, estimated to be in the thousands, were also killed.
Kaufman has killed enemy combatants. He has seen fellow Marines killed, including those under his command.
Now a Mansfield police detective in his 18th year on the force, Kaufman told new graduates of the Mansfield Municipal Veterans Court on Wednesday to surround themselves with people who love them.
That was his key to survival. He also battled a dependency on painkillers that developed after multiple surgeries to repair his badly wounded hand.
“Be careful. Surround yourself with people who are going to lift you up because you never know when that day comes where you just can’t take it anymore … and you’re just going to have one … one leads to five … leads to six … leads to 12,” said Kaufman, who lost a sister to a drug overdose in 2019.
“What you have accomplished today is an amazing feat and you should be proud of yourself,” he said during the ceremony at Mansfield FOP Lodge 32.
“Don’t give in to the temptation, try to keep your head above the waves. If you can’t, find somebody who can help you … because when you lose people, it sucks,” the Ashland County native said.
Kaufman said he was prescribed Percocet for pain in 2004 after his hand was shot, a painkiller that contains oxycodone.
“Nobody understood what Percocets were … the damage that they caused. I just remember getting 90 ‘Perc 30s,’ bottle after bottle after bottle after bottle when I landed in Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda.
“I had a brown paper lunch bag with about 15 to 20 bottles of ‘Perc 30s,’ 90 count in there.”
He was able to get leave and go home for Thanksgiving.
“My problem was I needed my Percocets. I was taking three or four or five or six of these at night to go to sleep. Until I realized, one day I couldn’t find them, because I was changing as a person.
“I was getting mean. I was getting to the point where if I didn’t have my percocets, everybody else was going to pay.
“My wife hid them from me and I was pissed. She said, ‘You don’t need those.’ I said, ‘Yes, I do.’
“I started yelling and then all of a sudden it hit me … I don’t need those. I don’t need those. I knew then and there that addiction for me is a powerful thing.
“I had to understand and know what my limits were. I never took percs again,” he said.
Kaufman, who made the decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps after Al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in October 2000, was deployed three times during his career in the military. He was also wounded in the leg during an earlier mission in Iraq.
He reminded the veterans in the room that fewer than 3 percent of the U.S. population have served in the nation’s military.
“Remember, you’re the less than 3 percent … less than 3 percent …
“Congratulations. … Welcome home,” said Kaufman, a USMC corporal who served from 2001 to 2005.
Former Mansfield Municipal Court Judge Jerry Ault launched the local Veterans Court in 2009, the first of its kind in Ohio and third in the nation.
It was developed to reduce crime, incarceration and recidivism by linking veterans to veteran-specific services, now operated by Judge Michael Kemerer.
To increase success, veterans are also linked with Veteran Service representatives and veteran peer mentors who educate and assist them in obtaining benefits and support services available only to veterans.
The Veterans Court is a voluntary specialty court docket program providing intense supervision of offenders that involves regularly scheduled review hearings with the judge, home visits, curfew checks, drug and alcohol testing and increased communication with the treatment providers.
The program requires at least one year of supervision and treatment, which is organized into four phases, corresponding to individual development.
The Veterans Court has served more than 328 participants thus far and has had 269 veterans successfully complete the program — including 12 who graduated Wednesday.
Kemerer said the nation expects a great deal from military members.
“We demand the impossible out of our military. We put them through training that would break most of us. We put them in situations that would break most of us,” the judge said.
“When they come back, if they’re so fortunate as to come back, they often have scars on the inside and out. But they make that sacrifice. We allow them to make that sacrifice because we know the world is a better place.
“America is safer. America is stronger because of what they are willing to do. But that leaves the rest of us with a debt, a debt we can never repay. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying to repay it.
“I like to think that’s what’s was going through Judge Ault’s head when he created this program. These people have given so much to our country.
“If there’s anything we can do, we must do … a little extra attention, a little extra care, extra services,” Kemerer said.
