Sea Power - February/March 2016

My father was in the Coast Guard for 26 years and retired as a captain. During his time, we spent a lot of time up and down the Eastern Seaboard at different units, and as I started to get older I really appreciated everything my dad and the people I met along the way did and I enjoyed the ability they had to travel.

I had a lot of Coast Guard friends and getting to interact with them helped make me see the amazing humanitarian mission the service has. I realized that joining the service and being part of that could be something I was proud of. It also felt like I was carrying on a pseudo family tradition.

I was accepted into the Coast Guard Academy in 2003 and graduated in 2007 as a commissioned ensign.

My first stop was a deck watch officer in Key West, Fla., at the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk. From there, I went to Portland, Ore., and was the intelligence officer as well as a command duty officer. I then went to flight school in 2011, graduated in 2012, and came to my current assignment at Barbers Point.

I’ve spent the last few years learning the aircraft, participating in training exercises and conducting various missions. In January, my helicopter was one of the first on scene after two Marine Corps helicopters crashed off the coast of Hawaii.

We got the call at 11: 30 p.m., and heading out there, it was one of those you never like hearing, that there’s potential aircraft in the water. But it was the adrenaline rush and you wanted to get out there and do your best to find something.

I was thinking, ‘this is what we
train for every day.’ In the mo-
ment, I was driven by this and
tried not to focus on the other out-
side factors. But I also was think-
ing about something else. I had
friends in that squadron. I went to
flight school with a number of
them, and when I saw the report
my heart immediately sank. The
Coast Guard, Navy and Marine
Corps all go to the same flight
school, so you make a lot of close
friends there.

Getting on the scene, you could smell the gas in the air, you could see debris in the water and you could see a lifeboat floating in the water. I had a lot of feelings out there, and when we were done I immediately called my friends at that squadron. They responded and said they were safe. They also thanked me for the mission I was doing.

That search-and-rescue case, along with my first rescue two months after I got to this assignment, have been my most memorable moments in the Coast Guard so far.

Since joining, I always knew I wanted to fly helicopters. My father was a career cutterman, but for me, I wanted to fly.

At my first assignment, each time I heard an aircraft fly overhead

I raced outside to look at it. I knew that’s where I wanted to be, in the air, conducting drug interdiction or search-and-rescue missions, and doing that amazing and rewarding mission.