U.S. Rep. Jason Crow invites Coloradans to write and drop off holiday cards for service members as part of his “Holiday Cards for Heroes” initiative.

Interested parties will have until Dec. 13 to deliver unsealed greeting cards to Crow’s Aurora office or his mobile office. United Service Organizations will get them into the hands of deploying or returning military personnel.

“The letters, the care packages, they really mean a great deal,” Crow said. “Going through military training and the deployments can be very isolating, very lonely experience. Getting these letters and videos and packages from friends and family – and even strangers, people you’ve never met, that say they’re thinking about you – is actually very meaningful and impactful.”

An Army veteran, he recalled his experience in Ranger School, being sleep deprived and hungry for several months straight. During training, a friend of his from college sent him a letter, with something extra.

“True to form, in the letter was a folded up McDonald’s cheeseburger wrapper,” he laughed. It was the friend’s way of flaunting the luxuries of civilian life. “It was classic trolling,” Crow added.

On another occasion, on deployment to Iraq, he received one of his favorite foods – pickles – which was no small feat considering how shipping perishable foods to the Middle East was a race against the thermometer.

“I remember in summer of 2003 opening up a care package of bagged pickles. And of course everybody around me thought I was crazy,” Crow said. “But it was a taste of home for sure.”

Alan Teo, a psychiatrist at the VA Portland Health Care System, found that veterans are reluctant to seek help for loneliness and depression, which are more common among older veterans. And a 2012 study of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans showed that post-traumatic stress and alcohol abuse were more prevalent in returning service members than in the general population.

Crow explained that it is important that these personal connections occur with all types of veterans.

“When people return from war and try to make that integration back into civilian life, there can be a different form of isolation,” he said. “There are programs where people send letters and cards to veterans over the holidays that don’t have family – in veterans nursing homes and other places.”

Crow’s district office is open on weekdays from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at 3300 S. Parker Road #100 in Aurora.