Rubinberg grew up in Skokie and went to basic training for the National Guard in June 2018. All his life he’d been part of a tight-knit Jewish community, but during his time in the military he experienced antisemitism and found it difficult to observe holidays and Shabbat, fast, and keep kosher because of the strict routines. It was a dark time because, as Rubinberg put it, “That’s who I was growing up, my identity.”

Depression and anxiety led him to leave the military. Stints in college courses didn’t work out as he struggled to find solid footing, and though Rubinberg found a job boarding dogs, which he was good at, an injury set him back. “The anxiety was so bad I couldn’t work,” he said. “I fell all the way back down the stairs [figuratively speaking]. After that, I barely left my room for a while.”

It was Cooper, his service dog, who helped him find his way. Training Cooper gave Rubinberg a goal, a reason to get out of the house, and the confidence to seek employment again.

And once he landed a job at the Garden, Rubinberg was surprised and grateful that his coworkers and his supervisor, senior horticulturist Chester Jankowski, Jr., encouraged him to incorporate Cooper into his workdays.

“He changes how I’m able to function,” Rubinberg said of service dog Cooper, who is ready to intervene if Rubinberg displays physical cues pointing to anxiety and PTSD—if Rubinberg gets low to the ground and wraps his hands over his head, for example, Cooper knows to approach and gently nudge his nose between Rubinberg’s arms and chest to “open him up.”

But Rubinberg doesn’t need to rely on Cooper much at the Garden, he said, because of the human connections he has made in the program, a therapeutic kinship with other veterans who understand him. And time outdoors keeps him feeling calm, so simply having Cooper near him is often all the reassurance he needs.

Jankowski noted that while Rubinberg started the program without much confidence, the shift in his self-perception has been noticeable. “Now he’s, this is who I am, I work at the Garden, this is my service dog,” Jankowski said.

Rubinberg is not necessarily an aspiring horticulturist; he is still mapping out his path beyond the Garden. But for other veterans like Marvin Scott, pictured left, the Veteran Internship Program is the key to a career he’s long been interested in.

A self-professed nerd who loves taking walks to identify trees and shrubs, Scott earned his horticulture certificate through the City Colleges of Chicago—and his Garden internship offered the on-the-ground experience he needed to grow his career.

“I was talking with one of my nieces, I was telling her about the names of trees, and she said, Uncle Marvin, you’ve got a lot of nerdy habits,” Scott said. “And here I am [at the Garden], I have my notebook, I’m taking down the names of prairie sedges. At first I felt I was asking too many questions, but Chester told me, ‘do not lose your enthusiasm and keep asking questions!’ Being a nerd is a compliment here. I’m working around very talented, incredible, scientifically-minded people…they’re more than happy to share what they know. It’s been very welcoming, which is refreshing to me.”

Scott has experienced depression and PTSD since his time in the Navy in the 1990s, as well as chronic pain because of a crush injury to his foot. His previous job walking and training dogs ended when the business closed during the pandemic. Since then, he has explored many avenues for long-term employment; in addition to his horticulture training, he recently completed the Compensated Work Therapy program at Edward Hines, Jr. VA Hospital. That’s how he heard about the Veteran Internship Program at the Garden. Like Rubinberg, Scott stayed on as a groundskeeper after the internship program graduation in August.

Starting the program side-by-side gave Scott and Rubinberg a built-in support network, along with veteran interns-turned-groundskeepers like Carmen Pulice, who interned with Jankowski in 2022 and has worked as a seasonal groundskeeper since.

“We have similarities because of our experiences,” Rubinberg said. “It made me feel validated, like I wasn’t alone. We’ve talked a lot about military and life experiences, and it benefits all of us…to get it out in the open in a way we can’t really do with [other people].”

“I’m getting a sense of teamwork again,” Scott said of his work with Jankowski, fellow interns like Rubinberg, and former interns like Pulice—also praising the support of Boehm and program manager Alicia Green.

“You plant beds [in the Grunsfeld Children’s Growing Garden] and see them thriving,” Scott said. “Or the entrance gardens—when you look at some of the things you’ve worked on and see how nice everything looks, you can say, wow, I was actually a part of that. That’s fulfilling.”

Interns and support staff from the 2023 Veteran Internship Program