By Noah Crenshaw | For The Republic
CAMP ATTERBURY — The day starts at 6 a.m., sliding off of a cot in a makeshift office at the edge of Camp Atterbury in southern Johnson County.
Russ Hessler showers and dresses, then sets to work completing paperwork for Team Rubicon, a veteran-led nonprofit tapped to help Afghan refugees in the United States, including the more than 6,500 being temporarily housed at Camp Atterbury. Wearing a gray Team Rubicon sweatshirt with “Rusty” written on it, he flips on the lights in the organization’s warehouse at 7 a.m., wakes up some of the other volunteers who do not live close by and eats breakfast if he has time.
Volunteers — some of whom sleep at the warehouse; others live nearby — arrive for a morning briefing and safety messaging.
They also talk about some of Team Rubicon’s cultural principles, which have meanings for the volunteers, or gray shirts, as Hessler calls them.
“One of them is ‘Change your socks.’ It has nothing to do with changing your socks. … Sometimes you need to take a break,” he said. “‘Your mother’s a donor.’ That’s a philosophy (which means) we’ll spend when we need to. We don’t want to waste money, though, because we live off of donors.”
Hessler goes over the day’s plan and assigns teams work that needs to get done. He then retreats into his office and responds to emails and phone calls.
He often gets questions about donations, though on Tuesday, the questions focused on the recent extension of Team Rubicon’s operation at Camp Atterbury. It was originally scheduled to end this Friday, when another organization, Save Our Allies, would have taken over, but the assignment was extended to Jan. 7.
The timing works out well. The refugees are expected to be completely resettled by then.
For the complete story, see Monday’s Republic.
