Academy NCO selected for Warrior Games

by Ann Patton

U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. - Just before three mortar bombs exploded around Tech. Sgt. Crystal Lovato in Iraq, she was ordering winter coats online for her two children back home.

"It would have been the last thing I had done to show my kids I love them," she said of the moments before the attack and her survival.

Sergeant Lovato, a Dean of Faculty support staff NCO, will be among 20 athletes selected to compete in the Department of Defense's Warrior Games May 10-14 in Colorado Springs.

Now a Reservist with the 302nd Security Forces Squadron at Peterson Air Force Base, Sergeant Lovato left active duty in 2006, but the memories of the bomb attack remain vivid. As a radio traffic operator, she had just finished briefing the incoming shift operator in Kirkuk, Iraq. She stepped outside to await transportation when the explosives went off.

At first, she recalled hearing a "thump thump," as if a truck were navigating over potholes (most likely) or a bomb hitting the ground.

It was the latter. The first bomb exploded across the street from her, and another detonated just steps away from her location next to a parked Humvee. She can still see the flying wood chips, rocks and dirt as an explosion destroyed the nearby bus stop.

"I can still hear it as clear as day," she said, recalling the sounds of shrapnel pinging the vehicle.

A third bomb went off just on the other side of a wall where she had taken shelter. The attacks burned her uniform sleeve and damaged her right ear, resulting in some hearing loss, but her eardrum remained intact.

Back in Colorado, the frequent and often erratic changes in weather, plus shifts in altitude, caused her pain until the ear "popped," as she described it, equalizing the pressure inside and outside the ear. Sergeant Lovato now has tubes in her ears, which has alleviated the discomfort, but she still has trouble hearing at times. She has to face anyone speaking to her, including her children and her husband, a FedEx employee at Peterson AFB. She remains in treatment for the injured ear and related functions such as balance. However, like many returning wounded warriors, she has found reintegration hard.

"Coming home has been really tough. It's still a work in progress," she said, explaining the temperament of her world now seems different with dramatic changes.

On active duty for six years, Sergeant Lovato first served in Turkey in security and later in law enforcement as a patrolman and desk sergeant before being hand-picked for corrections facility training. Born in Albuquerque, N.M., she is the oldest of five siblings and a confessed "Navy brat." Though she desired a Navy career herself, her father advised her that the Air Force would be a better fit for her.

"I was a good girl and did what my dad told me to do," she said with a laugh. "But I love the organization and structure of the military."

She expects to complete a bachelor's degree in accounting next month. Nonetheless, the path ahead seems unclear for the mother of a son, now 6, and a daughter, now 2.

"I can't plan a future," she said. "I don't have a Plan B."

But she remains hopeful, despite her injuries.

"It's what you make of it," she said.

During the games, she expects to participate in swimming, discus, and archery. Sergeant Lovato is especially enthusiastic about the archery competition. "It's a quiet weapon I can shoot," she said.