Vanessa Daley is the Project Manager of TAPS Youth Programs. She is the surviving daughter of SFC Dan H Gabrielson, an Army Reservist with more than 20 years of service, who was KIA 9 July 03 in Baqubah, Iraq.  At the time, Vanessa was a student at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, studying Elementary Education with an emphasis on Early Childhood. In 2005, Vanessa volunteered as a mentor at the TAPS Good Grief Camp in Washington DC. It was during those 5 days that she fell in love with the mission of TAPS & realized just how much she missed that military connection. For the next three years, Vanessa would continue to volunteer, even after taking a 2nd grade teaching position - in the same town that her father worked in for 20 years. Vanessa joined TAPS full time in 2008, moving to Fort Hood to work more closely with military families. In 2009, Vanessa helped the Army to launch it's Survivor Outreach Services (SOS) program & set up the first Regional TAPS office on a military installation, which just happened to be across from the 4ID Memorial - a wall on which her father is memorialized. Vanessa moved to Fort Bliss in 2011 with her husband, David - a soldier whom she met at Fort Hood, & began providing support to survivors there, setting up another regional TAPS office and working closely with the Fort Bliss SOS. Originally from Northwestern Wisconsin, Vanessa and her husband just bought their first home Up North & plan to raise their girls close to family.
About TAPS
The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) offers compassionate care to all those grieving the death of a loved one serving in our Armed Forces. Since 1994, TAPS has provided comfort and hope 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a national peer support network and connection to grief resources, all at no cost to surviving families and loved ones.
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