Courtesy Photo | U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) pilot Scott Myers has volunteered with Yuma's...... read more read more
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After a career in the Marine Corps and Navy that includes eight overseas deployments, some veterans might feel they have served their country enough.
For U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) pilot Scott Myers, however, retirement from active duty merely marked a different phase of service.
Myers wasn’t satisfied with merely his demanding job and earning multiple graduate degrees. Looking for a chance to volunteer his talents, he heard about the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) about 15 years ago.
“A buddy of mine told me about a squadron he joined,” said Myers. “He and I went down to the local CAP unit and I ended up liking it so much, mostly for the people. The missions are really cool and focused on the cadets and their leadership.”
The official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force, CAP serves as a supplement to search and rescue and drug interdiction missions and provides aerospace education and cadet programs for youth ages 12 through 20. Each individual squadron relies on experienced volunteers to teach cadets about aviation and ferry them along on flights for real-world air experience. Though a civilian organization, CAP and its cadet programs are organized along military lines. Myers says he has great admiration for the cadets he has mentored.
“This is probably the top one percent of the kids,” he said. “They’re full-time students in middle school or high school, so it takes a lot of dedication to have a limited amount of time and apply it to something like this.”
He is particularly proud of those who choose to proceed into military careers.
“Some of them enlist,” said Myers. “Some want to be fighter pilots—there are folks that have gone on to the service academies and now fly F-16s. I’d say about half of the cadets I’ve met have wanted to make the military a career.”
In addition to regular flights with cadets on weekends, Myers has served as the Yuma CAP squadron’s mission pilot, safety officer, maintenance officer, and counter-drug officer.
“The program is a really good conduit for community service and for STEM training and learning about aviation,” he said. “I’ve done search and rescue missions with cadets, too, and they do really well.”
Myers’s CAP connection has even led to him volunteering to fly missions of mercy for non-human passengers.
“The current commander for the squadron is also involved with a group that specializes in rehabbing raptors: hawks, owls, eagles, you name it,” he said. “They do everything from hunt with them to do demos for kids.”
When a hawk was found injured in Lake Havasu City after a hurricane that passed through southern Arizona in 2023 and came to the attention of the group in Yuma. Although the hawk’s only injury was a broken beak, the creature would have been euthanized without special human intervention. Myers volunteered to fly to Lake Havasu City and ferry the bird to an animal rehab group who met the plane at Deer Valley Airfield in Phoenix. The hawk recovered after being fitted with a temporary prosthetic beak. Recently, another rescue mission involved Myers picking up two injured raptors secured in cardboard boxes with breathing holes and bringing them back to Yuma for treatment.
“The hawk effort doesn’t happen very often, but if it pops up I’ll help if I can,” he said.
Myers has plenty of other activities in his non-work hours: among other things, he has taught astronomy and physics part time at Arizona Western College for more than a decade. Yet he has no plans to stop volunteering with CAP.
“It’s fun to keep flying and help out,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 09.10.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.10.2025 13:33 |
| Story ID: | 546851 |
| Location: | YUMA PROVING GROUND, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 17 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, ‘A hawk of a day’: YPG employee volunteers with budding pilots, saves wildlife, by Mark Schauer, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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