CHICAGO (WLS) -- A veteran who has decided to make Chicago home after years of service is creating an app to help other vets like himself.
The Victor app is somewhat of a one-stop shop for vets. It will be free for active military, veterans and their immediate families. The Humboldt Park man behind it all has passion for helping others and a love for this city.
MORE: Check out the Victor app website
"Chicago is in the neighborhoods, it's on the South Side, the West Side. That's real to me and that's why I love it," said Greg Jumes.
Jumes set up shop here in Chicago in 2015, looking for new opportunities and a new life after serving our country. Jumes was an infantryman in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2006 to 2010 with one combat deployment to Iraq. He also did private military contracting from 2011 to 2015 spending time in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. But there was a point in his life where being a civilian was harder than being overseas.
"Got into drugs, got into alcohol, doing things that I should not have been doing. But I wasn't in the right state of mind at all," Jumes said.
Now he's looking to prevent that for other vets by showing them they can do something great after serving.
"You've already done a great thing and you can keep that going by coming to a big city, or maybe it's a small city. But you have to go to someplace that has opportunities and be able to identify those," he explained.
Jumes has taken his opportunities and created the Victor App. It focuses on three key components to help vets make the transition.
"So the three things that I identified is a sense of community...The community aspect is businesses that are user friendly that offer a discount, special or a job opportunity or an activity or an event. To find other veterans that are in the city," Jumes said. "If you're in Idaho or Northern Wisconsin and there isn't a VA hospital near you, you should be able to find a private practitioner or a private within your community or a certain mile radius who can offer you some sort of comparable services. But you also need a job, too. So we put career services in there as well to find jobs around you, to find featured businesses that have veteran hiring initiatives."
It's everything our local heroes need, all in one place.
Jumes spends his time downtown at the shared working space We Works, putting the final touches on the app. He's hoping for it to official launch in late March or early April.
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