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FEATURES

  • Footprints in the Sand: A girl who was never alone

    “It was easy to hide the abuse, I just blamed it on all the sports I played.”U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Tanya Lee Rose Rodriguez, 87th Security Forces Squadron K-9 handler grew up in Ventura County, California, in a seemingly normal home. However, Rodriguez experienced an upbringing that no child

  • Delivering excellence: MacDill boom operators train for perfection

    There’s a saying in the Air Force about refueling aircraft, something along the lines of nothing accomplishes mission success without tanker aircraft gas. This saying rings true in Tampa. Refueling aircraft such as MacDill Air Force Base’s KC-135 Stratotanker are vital to mission success and keeping

  • ANG family deployed simultaneously: Sniders support 779th EAS

    The term ‘beans and bullets’ was started in the civil war, a time where fathers and sons served together side-by-side. Beans, as in coffee beans, and bullets where items supplied to support the frontlines, similar to the mission here at Ali Al Salem Air Base. For one Illinois family, the tradition

  • Are You Okay?

    It’s 2010 and Airman 1st Class Leonard James’ phone vibrates silently in his pocket; he quickly reaches down and sends the call to voicemail.“I was in class and we weren’t supposed to have our phones,” the now staff sergeant recalls.James was at Port Hueneme Naval Base, California, a technical

  • Cramped spaces and fuel vapors: MacDill “Tank Divers”

    Tucked away behind U.S. Central Command and MacDill Air Force Base, Florida’s traditional hangars lies a hangar originally built to house fighter jets. On a given day, peeking out of that hangar will sit a KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft seemingly out of place in the considerably smaller maintenance