Spotlight on SouthLight Fayetteville 

Buddy Check Program Helps Veterans Who Might Slip Through the Cracks 

CityView magazine recently published a story by Morgan Casey on SouthLight’s Buddy Check program. Here is a condensed version. [Full article:  https://tinyurl.com/2yt7yu3] 

Cumberland County veterans are turning to SouthLight’s Veteran Buddy Check* program to find community and get help. Launched in April 2025, the Veteran Buddy Check meetings are monthly, social check-ins among Veterans. (Family and active military are also welcome.) Informal in nature, they serve a deeper purpose to help veterans get the help they need. 

“This is a safe place for veterans, service members, and their families to come to meet with peers, seek help getting resources,” explains Wade Adair, SouthLight Veteran Peer Support specialist who runs the program. Every month from 9 to 11 a.m., Adair sits down over coffee and breakfast with veterans from Cumberland and surrounding counties to ask them how they’re doing. “The number of veterans taking advantage of Buddy Check is growing,” he adds. 

As a state-certified peer support specialist, Adair uses his experience to help those attending Buddy Check meetings. He listens to their struggles. “My goal is to get in front of them as soon as I can and show them that we’re for real, that we’re really helping.” 

Some tell the group they can’t get their driver’s license or find a job. Others pull Adair aside to say they’re going hungry or need help starting counseling. He works to connect each veteran with a solution in the same meeting, developing a plan that addresses their needs and following up with them daily. 

Adair said formulating the plan while the veteran is at SouthLight Fayetteville eliminates the trust issues many veterans have with organizations that have delays in accessing programs (often at the VA). “Long wait times and delayed appointments can cause veterans to never return,” Adair says. “You just lost that person back to whatever issue that they were dealing with and that they needed help with.” 

Even if veterans get an appointment at a VA location, Adair said it can be pushed back weeks or months. Adair was an Army combat infantryman for nine years and served in Operation Desert Storm. He has personal experience of trying to navigate the care system for veterans. “What we’re doing here is trying to fill in the gaps in where they’re not receiving treatment in a timely fashion.” 

While Adair isn’t certified to fill out VA paperwork or provide mental health treatment, he recognizes that asking for help can be difficult for veterans. Stigma often surrounds service members seeking treatment for mental health disorders, and Adair says the stigma is still present when they become veterans, making it hard for them to seek treatment. It’s why he uses his own story coming out of chronic pain and depression-induced substance use disorder to highlight how lifesaving asking for help can be. Without the initial phone call to the Vet Center, Adair said he wouldn’t have made it out of the “black cloud” that he found himself in. 

“I encourage all my brothers and sisters—if you need help, just do the first reach-out,” he said. “The rest is a lot easier.” 

(*Started in 2019 by the American Legion, the Buddy Check program organizes periodic wellness checks on veterans. These checks help connect them with community or VA resources, from mental health treatment to food assistance.)