Veteran Mental Health Treatment for PTSD via Mountain Biking

My name is Jacob Cruz-Ratliff, and I am the Founder/Owner of Expeditionary Veterans Association (EVA), which is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt veterans charity organization. I served in the U.S. Army from 2000-2004 and w/ a combat tour in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003; I am a 100% Disabled Combat-Veteran due to my military service. Well, that is enough about me, let’s talk about the real reason I am reaching out to you. EVA was started to assist Veterans that have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and to assist them in organizing outdoor types of activities with other Veterans that suffer from PTSD. Two to Four times a week, year-round, we host mountain bike trips in hopes to help these Veterans adjust back into society to include making new friendships as they once did while serving in the military.

Our mission and moto is, “To provide recreational therapy to Veterans and Active-Duty Military Personnel that suffer with Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (PTSD) via Mountain-Biking and other outdoor recreations therapy activities.”

We hope that our organization can provide a better way of life for them. As for now the County of San Diego, CA and County of Riverside, CA is where EVA Headquarters is currently located, in hopes to spread to other regions in California within the coming years. In January 2023, we opened our program in Las Vegas, Nevada and October 2024 we opened our newest program in Saint Louis, Missouri. We hope in 2025/2026 to open our program to cover Texas and Oklahoma.

With our recent business expansion into Las Vegas, Nevada and St. Louis, Missouri we are hoping to find local bike shops and bike industry companies that will be willing to establish a business relationship, where EVA and your business will benefit from each other’s collaborations. This would mean we would work directly with you with event planning, donations for events, discounts, and referrals from all our veteran clientele to include, but not limited to social-media platforms, friends, and family as well. If you desire to establish this business relationship with our organization, I will make myself readily available for open communications to discuss a cooperative business plan.

Funding is strictly done by donation, and therefore this Proposal for Sponsorship request was developed. Whatever product is donated, discounts provided, services, or funding is provided, will be used to the purchase of recreational equipment required to successfully host events that will provide treatment therapy to those Veterans suffering from PTSD.

Most of our therapy rides are exploring XC, All-Mountain, and Enduro/DH type trails, but we also have members that have become EVA ambassadors and racing many times a year in SoCal Enduro Races, Big Bear-Snow Summit DH Races, Mammoth Mountain DH Races and of course local races; to include races that are held in Las Vegas, NV and other States. All of which we are proud of backing them and many of them never used to mountain-bike before joining Team EVA and now are Pro and Amateur racing.

In October 2023, we made progress by purchasing a 2015 Ford Transit 150, which will help stack-up more Vets to transport with their gear and take rides with us to our recreational therapeutic activities. With the assistance of our current MTB sponsors and both our sales rep. and the sales/finance manager, who by the way was a USMC Desert Storm Veteran, we were able to finally make this purchase. This van was equipped with almost everything we needed. Even though we would love to have purchased a brand-new van, we couldn’t because of limited funding, but we can’t complain because this is truly a blessing as it will help our organization do big shuttle bike trips to therapy rides. This passenger-van will pick up EVA members and is loaded with bikes to be taken out to EVA recreational therapy treatment sessions all over Southern California and elsewhere.

In mid-2020, we started providing more ebikes/emtb's for our members as we know how hard it is to enjoy a ride with their disabilities hindering the full enjoyment and performance of mountain biking. Considering now ebikes/emtb's are being more and more used on trails and more are seeing the benefits of using them for our therapy treatment program

With the continuous request for us to start a Road Cycling and Gravel Biking therapy group, we started a Roadie/Gravel Biking therapy group in Riverside County, CA in June 2024. With the first therapy ride being a great success, we look forward to the growth of this new option to provide continuous therapy to our clientele. In December 2025, we also added adaptive mountain-biking into our program, which we realized there were a lot of Veterans that were primarily confined to various forms of wheelchairs or assisted walking devices/prosthetics. With this new program we are continuing to reach out to the adaptive mountain biking companies that may be able to donate adaptive bikes and equipment or funding to get these Disabled-Veterans out on the trails as soon as possible.