Before assuming my duties as second-semester Company Commander, I am sent up to Air Station Cape Cod for a weekend in early December 2006. The Academy has a program where we can help stand desk phone duties, hop on some orientation flights, and stay in the barracks. We drive up on Friday after class, and the weather is terrible all day, with rain and mist, low clouds, and poor visibility. As we arrive around 8:30 that night, the low clouds have lifted slightly and given way to the darkness, but the winds have picked up significantly, with gusts over 45 knots. Just as I get out of the car, I see an H-60 Jayhawk charge into the powerful winds and quickly disappear into the cloud-filled dark abyss of the night sky. After watching their takeoff in awe, we report to the operations center and meet with the Operations Duty Officer. The ODO’s job is to talk on the radio to the helicopter and relay vital information between Sector, District, and the OPS boss. The ODO fills us in on the case where the crew has launched to medically evacuate a critically ill patient from Martha’s Vineyard and bring them to a hospital for life-saving medical care. We sit in the command center and track their position while glued to various computer screens with communications logs, weather radar, and aircraft maintenance records displayed. We anxiously await the crew’s return while the ODO teaches us how to do the various functions of his job.

I am totally riveted by this case. It is incredible watching the crew take off into the howling winds and darkness to save someone’s life. I can’t believe what I am witnessing as it unfolds before me in the operations center. Forty-five minutes later, the crew returns, and after shutting down the helicopter, the aircraft commander, LT Sean Krueger, stops in the operations center. The ODO congratulates Sean on saving the patient’s life, and I am amazed at how nonchalant he is. He walks around like it is nothing, like it is just another day at the office, and I realize acts of heroism like that are commonplace here. I can’t believe it. He spends a few minutes talking to us and tells us a little bit about his case. A few minutes later, we retire to the barracks, and on the walk over, LT Krueger is walking in front of us. He’s wearing his leather pilot’s jacket with the fur collar, a fitted AIRSTA ballcap, and carrying his oversized camouflage helmet bag. He is the image of what I have spent my whole life wanting to be. I hardly know him, but I want to be him.

The next day, I am scheduled to fly with Air Station Cape Cod’s Operations Officer, and I meet him in his office before the flight. He asks me where I’m from, and I tell him that I lived in Rhode Island. He seems excited and says that we will be able to fly over my parents’ house. I can’t believe it. A few minutes later, I am dressed out in the Mustang survival suit and in the back of the H-60. We take off from the air station and head to Boston. The OPS boss gives me an aerial tour of the city and points out the Boston Garden, Fenway, and the Hatch Shell. From there, it’s a short flight to Rhode Island, and we do a full orbit around Aquidneck Island. We see the Cliff Walk in Newport with all the Bellevue mansions. We fly past Second Beach in Middletown, where I was a lifeguard, and I think back to all my time on that beach. All the time I spent telling everyone I wanted to fly in Coast Guard helicopters someday. All the time I spent pointing up at the H-60s that would regularly fly over the beach, wishing I was in them. I think back to getting the call for the Coast Guard Academy while sitting on the tower. I also remember the small H-60 toy of mine that my parents brought me when I tried to quit.

Soon, we round the corner up the west side of Aquidneck Island and head toward my parents’ house. I do my best to give headings and a description of the house so that we don’t miss it. As we get close, I see my parents outside and the dogs running in circles in the yard. The OPS boss orbits the house several times as I wave out the door at my parents, and I feel like the luckiest person alive.

This flight is more than an incredible sightseeing tour. It is also a nostalgic reflection on my life. Flying over Second Beach, I can’t help but think about how proud the high school version of me would be if he could see me flying over the beach right now. That boy who would sit on the lifeguard chair wondering if he was good enough and suffering with compulsions would never believe how much I’ve changed. That boy would be so proud of the man I am becoming.

Flying over my house and seeing my parents, I can’t help but think of how proud they must be seeing their boy living his dream after he almost quit and threw it all away. I’m sure they tell everyone in the neighborhood that I am in the helicopter while brimming with pride.

I am starting to feel proud of myself, but I can’t let myself dream too big. I don’t want to get my hopes up because I still know there is no chance I am getting into flight school straight out of the Academy, and that rejection will be devastating.