The Milwaukee VA Medical Center serves 24,000 veterans, a quarter of which, come to the VA for mental health crises. “This is their medical home, most of them have been coming here a long time,” said Ben Thelen, a former EMT and combat medic in Iraq, who now works for the VA. He’s behind a new program that is training EMTs to identifying and handling mental health crisis situations when responding to veterans’ 911 calls.