San Diego sailors help DYA clients

Guam - "I've been in here about ten months, life has been very hard in here be good and stay out of trouble," said a DYA client anonymously. Bad decisions have led to dozens of the island's troubled youth being forced to spend their days at the Department of Youth Affairs.

While they're learning life lessons that crime doesn't pay, it's the visits and help they get from the community they say helps them get by. Recently several sailors from the USS Matthew Perry based out of San Diego, California spent an entire day with the DYA clients.

Vanessa Garcia said, "What we do is we like to go out and help out the community as much as we can, we try to do that in every port that we hit it makes us feel good just being able to come out here and help out the community. Everything is for a good cause."

DYA officer in charge George Guerrero says this is the first time the Navy has come out to visit with the clients at the Mangilao compound. He said, "Right now they are going to do co-working environment doing yard work for now, and after that if time permit interact with each other like play basketball and after that we have a special dinner for them."

Garcia says this is definitely not the last time that the military will get involved, adding, "We'd like for them to know the Navy is not just a job. We like to reach out to them by helping them and whatnot."

The client said, "It makes me feel like they care for us; once in a while help us out and do things that we have to do."

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