HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — With a name like StoneWorks Agency, you might think the Hot Springs-based non-profit would specialize in something like masonry or landscaping.
Since they're an "agency" you might think they have a lot of people.
Actually, though, StoneWorks is in the business of remodeling the lives of veterans who need support. The small group has proven to be a bunch of rock stars to the people they help.
"Our agency is small, but we're mighty," said director Sheryl Talbert, as she explained her group's mission while occupying an office on a busy day at the Garland County Library.
She explained that the lofty mission of the 13-year-old group is to serve veterans of all eras. The non-profit no longer has a permanent base, but that's the way Talbert likes it.
For three to four hours every week, she reserves office space and field calls. On other days, she will set up a table at the V.F.W.
StoneWorks is an organization that is small, mighty, and mobile.
"People know I'm here," Talbert said. "They can come in, and sometimes we'll have four or five veterans sitting around. It's amazing once you bring a group of vets together, how they can help each other."
That's one example of the networking she facilitates. On the day we met her, she got a call to help build a wheelchair ramp. The call came from one of the dozens of people who know Talbert has connections to dozens more.
That ramp will get built in no time.
"There's a lot of those little needs that sometimes people just don't know where to ask. So then they call me," she described.
All those little things help chip away at the bigger challenges in Hot Springs, like the thousands of homeless neighbors, with a huge number of them being veterans.
Other projects might involve gathering groups of veterans who don't look like the denizens of veterans' groups of past decades. People like volunteer Amy Rose, who represents the new face of former servicemembers.
"I was in the Air Force from '99 to '05," Rose said. "I was a staff sergeant and I was stationed in England, Mississippi, and Colorado and went to al-Asad, Iraq, in '03 and '04."
Talbert helped Rose when she came to town five years ago, teaching her the one-on-one method she deploys, and Rose, in turn, has used it to discover there are a lot of women like herself out there.
"A lot of us have the same voice and the same story," Rose said. "[We] just really come alongside and we're finding out what needs she has. Because a lot of us don't voice our needs as much as we probably need to," she explained.
Working one-on-one doesn't lend itself to relying on a regimented program or branded process that makes you say: "Ahh the Stone Works method."
Talbert thrives by being more flexible and being small enough to maneuver, then have a big impact.
"When they come and say, 'this is what we need, we need food, we need a ramp, we need a job,' Talbert said. "Whatever they need, then we take it one person at a time, one vet at a time, and help them."