Running to protect

Later, via Facebook, she tells me about her difficult journey in the military. After happy childhood days, Raquel was placed in the care of social services when she was 14, because her mother abused alcohol and drugs and became emotionally and physically violent. At the height of the abuse, she took Raquel away from school for a month. Raquel spent her youth in children’s homes.

“My sisters were placed in foster homes, but no one wants to take a teenager,” she messaged. The years in children’s homes were sometimes tough. She met her parents only under supervision, but meetings did not bring the family closer.

“Always when I tried to forgive them, mostly my mother, I ended up having to take my feelings back,” she says. Raquel ran away often. Social workers saw her as defiant and hard to deal with, but Raquel says she felt responsible for her siblings. She didn’t trust any of the workers either.

“Most of the time I ran away to protect my sisters from my mother or foster parents. One of the foster parents’ boyfriends threw my sister out and abused her. One of my sisters started to gain weight. The social workers wanted me to do their job and tell them what had happened to my sisters.”

The Marine Youth Program was a rare positive part of her youth. It became an important motivation to join the Army later. “I actually really enjoyed it. It was almost like preparing us to join the military. They were teaching us about discipline and respect,” she says.

She was determined to make her life better. She enrolled in Saddleback Community College in southern Orange County, California. 

Army recruiters visited the school frequently. When she expressed an interest in joining the Marines, the recruiter started to persuade her to join the Army instead. “He phoned me practically every other day for a year,” Raquel remembers.
Raquel finally accepted. She wanted to join the airborne section of the Marines, but they did not need more recruits at that time. Small in size, but determined to find new challenges, she said she wanted to find the toughest place to go.

At the beginning of 2002, she joined “jump school” where regular Army troops get parachute training. She was recruited to the National Guard, where she volunteered to serve in Afghanistan in March 2006 for a year. She was turning 27 that year. “I volunteered, because I had no strings attached. I was not married, I had no relationship, no kids. So I figured that I just go and serve my country and at least say I had done it.”