Face of Defense: Airman Finds Better Life After Abandoning Gangs for Service

By Robb Lingley, Air Force Space Command

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Growing up in Gilroy, California, Jacqueline Jauregui had everything a girl could wish for: money, designer clothes and so much more. Shortly after her high school graduation, her father took everything from her and kicked her to the streets.

Now an Air Force staff sergeant and the enlisted aide to the Air Force Space Command deputy commander, Jauregui was determined to make her life right, but struggled to get there. She talked about her past to fellow airmen during a “Storytellers at The Club” event here March 30.

“Growing up in Gilroy was a place where everybody knew each other,” Jauregui said. “The way I was raised my dad gave me everything I wanted. I was the girl who spent up to $3,000 on myself every month.”

Although it seemed that everything was perfect on the outside, her home life was not great.

“My dad was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for which he didn’t take his medication and he was an alcoholic,” Jauregui said. “When he came home we wouldn’t know what kind of mood he would be in and he would just trash the house. The next day he would leave a $1,000 check on the table to replace what he broke.”

She became tired of depending on her father and his money. When Jauregui was close to graduating high school he told her he wasn’t going to pay for her college.

“I decided that since I wasn’t going to college I would join the Air Force,” she said.

Two weeks before her high school graduation, Jauregui was in a car accident and injured her back. The injury was serious enough that she wasn’t able to enlist in the Air Force right away because she was on pain medications.

Cut Off

A week after she graduated high school, Jauregui’s father kicked her out of the house and completely cut her off.

“I could only take with me what I paid for with my own money,” she said.

Jauregui bounced around living with various friends until she settled in with her cousin and his wife. For a while things went well. Her cousin gave her a car and she had a job. The problem was her cousins were Crip gang members.

For Jauregui, their gang affiliation didn’t matter because for the first time in years she felt like she was a part of a family. She was close with her cousins and their friends and having fun. Because of this she actually wanted to be more involved with the gang.

Two of Jauregui’s cousins sat her down and explained to her that if she joined the gang there would be only two ways out: death or prison.

“My cousins wouldn’t let me become a gang member,” she said. “They told me I was young, had a clean slate, and they didn’t want that life for me because I had so much potential.”

Jauregui’s cousins gave her money and kicked her out of the house. She ended up moving in with her boyfriend. After a while, he quit his job and they were living off her $12.99 an hour salary. To help make ends meet they sold all of their furniture, leaving them with just a mattress.

“All we could afford to buy was ramen and frozen burritos,” Jauregui said. “We couldn’t even afford toiletries. My boyfriend and I had to share a bar of soap, which was disgusting.”

Her low point came when she couldn’t afford to buy soap to bathe with. She took a bottle of laundry detergent from the laundry room of her apartment and she and her boyfriend used that to wash themselves.

They weren’t be able to buy necessities, but Jauregui’s boyfriend bought and sold drugs. She told him she wanted to join the military and couldn’t be around drugs.

‘What Am I Doing Here?’

The following summer Jauregui went to stay with her best friend after she returned from college. Her friend’s parents, seeing how desperate she looked, bought her necessities. Before her friend left on vacation, she drove Jauregui back home to the apartment she shared with her boyfriend. Jauregui discovered her boyfriend was throwing a party.

She said she got mad and took a walk around the neighborhood.

“I was walking when I saw a mother with her young son and daughter,” Jauregui said. “All of a sudden I heard a car screech up and then gunshots. I remember ducking behind a pillar and watched the mother chuck her kids in her apartment as she hid behind a pillar as well.”

In that moment, while gunshots were going off, she said she thought to herself, “What am I doing here? This isn’t the life that I wanted.”

After, Jauregui went to a payphone and called her grandmother in Del Rio, Texas, for help. Her grandmother immediately flew her out to Texas in July 2008. Two months later, she was finally able to join the Air Force.

“What I learned is that life is hard,” Jauregui said. “It literally takes one second to wreck your entire life. I almost joined a gang and did drugs, and that would have ruined my entire life.”

She said she remembers when her cousins prevented her from joining the gang, and told her not to make a bad decision that would negatively impact her life just because she was having a bad day.

She made the right decision.

DoD to Provide $200 Million in Security Cooperation Funds to Ukraine

WASHINGTON --  The Defense Department announced today that it will provide $200 million to Ukraine in security cooperation funds for additional training, equipment and advisory efforts to build the defensive capacity of Ukraine’s forces.

This reaffirms the long-standing defense relationship between the United States and Ukraine, and brings the total U.S. security sector assistance to Ukraine to more than $1 billion since 2014.

The added funds will provide equipment to support ongoing training programs and operational needs, including capabilities to enhance Ukraine’s command-and-control, situational awareness systems, secure communications, military mobility, night vision and military medical treatment.

The security cooperation builds on Ukraine’s recent adoption of the Law on National Security. This law, which provides a legislative framework for aligning Ukraine’s national security architecture with Euro-Atlantic principles, constitutes a major step toward Ukraine’s goal of achieving NATO interoperability. The implementation of these reforms will bolster Ukraine’s ability to defend its territorial integrity in support of a secure and democratic Ukraine.

A timeline for delivery and fielding of equipment will be determined at a later date.

Oregon Airmen Train to Support Wildland Firefighters

By Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Jennifer Shirar, 173rd Fighter Wing

WARRENTON, Ore. -- Fifty-seven airmen from the Oregon Air National Guard’s 173rd Fighter Wing based at Kingsley Field in Klamath Falls, Oregon, spent two weeks here learning to assist wildland firefighters.

This was the first time National Guardsmen were trained before being tasked to support firefighting efforts in Oregon.

“In the past, we did not train beforehand, and this caused about a two-week delay in having Oregon National Guard resources ready to deploy,” says Air Force Chief Master Sgt. James Dean, chief of the 173rd Mission Support Group . “Now we are trained and ready to deploy!”

Air Force Col. Jeff Smith, commander of the 173rd Fighter Wing adds, “We should cut the response time [by] more than 50 percent, enabling our manpower surge to augment the [Oregon Department of Forestry] and other partners sooner, hopefully minimizing impacts of fire damage.”

Last year, nearly 100 airmen from Kingsley Field were part of the more than 600 Oregon National Guard soldiers and airmen called to support firefighting efforts across the state. It is anticipated that there may be a similar call this year due to extremely dry conditions across Oregon.

“As one of the Oregon National Guard's state missions -- to protect our state from natural disasters -- wildland firefighting has become one of the biggest issues for many of the north western states,” Dean said. “We have some of the best and brightest on our team, and they come from all ranks, ethnicities and backgrounds; the ability to work together as one team in such a short amount of time in such a hazardous and dangerous environment is truly amazing to see and to be part of.”

Balancing Multiple Responsibilities

National Guard units are tasked with supporting both the state and federal governments. Smith said this can be a tricky balancing act at times.

“We are sworn to support the nation and the state in times of need, and sometimes we have to do both,” he said.

He points out that last year the 173rd Fighter Wing accomplished just this, supporting all three of its major mission sets simultaneously -- deploying in support of global operations, training F-15C Eagle pilots and fighting wildfires in Oregon.

Smith says this was accomplished by being able to call up Drill Status Guardsmen to support these missions. “Without them, we could not tackle so many tasks at once.”

Smith notes that this is not only the wing’s mission, it is personal. “We live here; we're raising our kids here. Because we're rooted in the community, we're also vested in it. By training to support wildfire fighting efforts, we prepare to defend and preserve the beautiful landscape we're so lucky to have in Oregon.”