Photo By Chief Petty Officer Spencer Fling | Fire Controlman 1st Class Raquel Lara poses for a portrait photo at Recruit Training...... read more read more
Subscribe
Meet Fire Controlman 1st Class Raquel Lara! She is a currently a #RecruitDivisionCommander (RDC) at #RecruitTrainingCommand (RTC), the @usnavy's only #BootCamp
Thirteen years ago, Lara lived in Mexico with her 6-month-old son, Otoniel. Her only thoughts at the time were focused on providing for her child. Knowing she had to make a change, she remembered a conversation she had with a Navy recruiter before she moved from the U.S. to Mexico.
“A recruiter had contacted me and we talked, so I guess what they said to me was always in the back of my head. The turning point in Mexico was when my son was born. I had to take care of him, so I decided to come back and join the Navy. I actually joined straight out of Mexico. I got on a bus from Mexico and came back to the U.S. with nothing but the clothes on my back.”
While it was a leap of faith for Lara to join the Navy, she knew that it was a means to provide for her son, whom she had to leave in Mexico during boot camp. Even as a seaman recruit, she discovered that the Navy could help her in ways she didn’t expect.
“When I was in boot camp, my RDC went out of her way to make sure my son was able to come back to me in the U.S. Just to see someone who only knew me because I was a Navy recruit be willing to help me out in that manner, meant a lot. She went out of her way to fix paperwork, send it off and everything that I needed. That act is something I’ll never forget.”
Fast forward 12 years since boot camp and Lara is now in the role of an RDC at RTC and leading the way for the future Sailors of the Navy. Most importantly to her, despite many sacrifices and challenges during her career, she has been able to achieve her most important goal, being a good mother.
“My son and I like to go snowboarding and rock climbing all the time. There's a rock wall up in Wisconsin and there's also a few mountains also. We always go together and it gets pretty competitive too. He can’t beat me, yet!”
Lara’s focus on being the best mother she can be at home has also carried over into her role as an RDC, a position where she is a parental-type role model to a group of 80 young Americans, every 10 weeks.
“What I do at home and at work, helps me in both places. I see so much of my son in the recruits and when I go home, I'll see some of their characteristics in my son.”
Lara’s proper balancing of her work and home life has led her to a great deal of personal gratification.
“I genuinely enjoy interacting with the recruits and seeing how unique their background is and why they joined from all over the world and seeing them prevail through the challenges at RTC. I can play a big role in their lives, just like my RDC did for me. I’ve had so many recruits tell me how much I’ve helped them. It's a very humane experience that you're not going to get anywhere else besides RTC.”
While her son has always been her motivation, Lara is emphatic in her advice to other single parents in the Navy to never use their family as an excuse.
“You wake up every day for them and you motivate yourself every day for them and you push yourself harder for them every day. I will never have someone say, she can't do something because she has a family. She can't get this qualification because she doesn't have time to balance her house, her home life and work life. Never.”
At home, Lara says she always tells her son that if he wants to achieve his goals, he has to want it. But for her, the biggest indicator that she is achieving her goal that she set many years ago in Mexico of taking care of her son, comes from Otoniel.
“He has randomly said to me, ‘Mom, you're doing a great job. I really appreciate everything you're doing.’ To have a 13-year-old think that and to vocalize it to me, it breaks my heart every time…it means so much.”
| Date Taken: | 02.16.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 02.16.2022 13:32 |
| Story ID: | 414761 |
| Location: | GREAT LAKES, IL, US |
| Web Views: | 551 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Staff in the Spotlight: FC1 Raquel Lara, by CPO Spencer Fling, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT