Patrick Stiner was still wrapping his head around it last week.

He was back in North Idaho.

Safe, with housing, and with new motivation to continue cancer treatments.

All of that, Stiner said, is thanks to a veterans group he had never heard of before last week, The Guardians Foundation.

"I'm still shocked," the combat veteran said last Monday, sitting in the Coeur d'Alene Press office.

When he had arrived as planned at a hospice in Key Largo, Fla. a few weeks ago, it wasn't all he had expected.

He wasn't in as bad of shape as the other folks there, he realized. And he was flooded with calls from friends he didn't know he had back home in North Idaho, prodding him to return.

"The more I dwelled on it, the worse I wanted to come back," he said.

But Stiner, who had been working as a homeless shelter volunteer in Post Falls, lacked the resources to do so. A call to Veterans Affairs resulted in "an unpleasant conversation" where it was clear the group couldn't help him, he said.

"I was in the position that I was going to hitchhike back," Stiner said.

But that very day, he received a call from a man named Erick Zook in Coeur d'Alene, who had heard about his situation.

Zook explained that the group he volunteers with, the Guardians Foundation Inc., might be able to help.

"For all the hard work he's done helping the homeless shelter, the favor is being returned to him," said Zook, himself an Iraq war veteran. "We help any and all veterans in need of services."

He assured Stiner the group would have him home in a few days.

The group came through, Stiner said.

"At 11 o'clock at night, they called and said, when you get up, go here, here and here and everything will be in order," Stiner said. "In a span of four hours, they had all the arrangements made."

The group's organizer, Coeur d'Alene resident Mike Shaw, said he had simply dialed different businesses for donations. He purchased a bus ticket for the three-day trip for Stiner, wired him over $100 for food and other traveling expenses, and even arranged for members of a local Veterans of Foreign Wars in Florida to drive Stiner to the bus station.

"It's what we do. We give our donors an opportunity to facilitate an organization that is constantly looking for situations to help veterans and their families," said Shaw, a National Guard staff sergeant who created The Guardians Foundation last September, after returning from Iraq. "We use techniques that large agencies can't do. We're pretty aggressive."

By 8:30 the next morning, Stiner said, he was on a bus.

When he arrived in Kootenai County a few days later, the Guardians found him a home in Spokane, and bought him a new phone.

Now accepting the cancer treatments he was determined not to bother with before, Stiner said he has a plan for what to do with the extra time.

"Work for the guardians," he said. "I've already volunteered."

The Guardian Foundation's goal is simple, Shaw said. To find quick solutions for disabled veterans with specific needs that, for some reason, the government isn't able to address.

Typically efforts involve finding corporate sponsors to procure items or fund a service, Shaw said.

"We're kind of a bully pit of a 501(c)(3)," he said.

So far, the group has helped a veteran procure a new hot water tank after his own busted, Shaw said. It helped another veteran procure a hot tub he was told was necessary for treating a spinal cord injury.

"We target the actual need," Shaw said.

After he returned home from overseas, he explained, he wanted a way to help other service men and women he could relate to.

"I decided that if I form an organization that helps individuals who have the same emotional feelings I've gone through, I'll be able to walk the walk and talk the talk," he said.

Zook, a disabled veteran of the Iraq war, said the Guardians Foundation is helping him find housing so he can move out of a homeless shelter.

"It's making a great change in my life," Zook said, adding that volunteering for the nonprofit full-time is keeping him out of trouble after he's had trouble finding a job. "Being able to get my life straight."

For more information go to: theguardiansfoundation.org.

Shaw admitted that the group is still in its infant stages, trying to set up an official office for folks to come in and request assistance face-to-face.

But he couldn't turn away veterans he's already encountered who need a leg up.

"We're just way ahead of schedule," Shaw said. "I had no idea the demand was that great."