Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Sydney Phoenix | Ensign Alexandra Lombardi, originally from Malden, Massachusetts, joined the U.S....... read more read more
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Ensign Alexandra Lombardi, originally from Malden, Massachusetts, joined the Coast Guard in 2016 and started at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. She was commissioned as an officer in 2020. She was commissioned as an officer in 2020. Now, she is the damage control assistant aboard USCGC Hamilton (WMSL 753).
“I had never heard of the Coast Guard until I started looking into where I wanted to go to college,” Lombardi said. “I went to a college fair held at the Boston Convention Center and stumbled over to the booth set up directly next to the one for the Coast Guard Academy, and while I was looking over the different color pamphlets on the table, I overheard the conversation the Coast Guard Academy representative was having with another group. I went home and started researching everything about the Coast Guard Academy, and once I read the mission statement, I was sold. I can confirm now that it was the best decision I made.”
Lombardi has been on Hamilton for about a year now and was on the recent deployment to the Mediterranean and Black Seas, serving as the damage control assistant and the unit public affairs officer.
“I knew this deployment was going to have a lot of moving parts, a lot of learning and hard work,” she said. “And it was. But when you see the face of a junior member of another nation’s coast guard or navy and they’re excited to learn from us, it means the world. It makes it all worth it at the end of the day. I was truly honored to be a part of this historic deployment.”
She said the biggest challenge was finding balance.
“You need to be able to find the “sweet spot” where you can accomplish all your tasks while still finding the time to take care of yourself each day,” Lombardi said.
Her favorite part of the deployment was the people. The engagements, foreign outreach, and her shipmates are what made it all worth it for her, she said. Seeing the beautiful sky at sea most nights was always a great ending to the day’s hard work.
“While underway, when the sun goes down, and you take a moment to go outside to look up at the stars, and you time it right where you can still see the horizon, if you just take a second to look all around you, you feel like you are in a snow globe,” she said.
| Date Taken: | 06.04.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 06.04.2021 15:00 |
| Story ID: | 398150 |
| Location: | NORTH CHARLESTON, SC, US |
| Hometown: | MALDEN, MA, US |
| Web Views: | 181 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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