 doesn't seem fun, right? Obviously, you know, the virus and caring for people that are, you know, extremely sick and, um... My name is Robert Kenia, R-O-B-E-R-T, and then P-E-N-A, and then has a little Kenya over it. And can you tell me what's your duty position in the guard? So right now I'm a surveillance technician with the 116th Air Control Squadron over in Camp Rylea. Okay. All right, so tell me about, I mean, just last year and a half's been pretty insane for the Orangard, but you're yourself too. What kind of taskings have you been doing and how do you feel about going into this? Well, so far this year, I actually went on fires as a air-based radio operator for the ODF, so the Oregon Department of Forestry, and I actually just came off of two different wildfires, the Skyline Ridge Complex and the Fox Complex down in Southern Oregon. And I just got home yesterday and then I got the order to come out and do a COVID relief. So it's busy. It's like a busy time to be in the guard, but it's also like, it's like the most helpful you'll ever feel in the guard because you're actually doing what you're supposed to be doing, you know, like what we were here for, so. How does this make you feel personally being able to go out there and do this? It feels pretty good. Like, you know, it's, I'm able to actually go out there and do something, like make kind of a difference. Like you read about all this stuff on the news, like the really bad wildfires, the COVID spike, and like you're actually able to go out there and participate in it versus just kind of laying back and hoping it turns out well. How important is it to you that you get to help your own community being in the National Guard? It's pretty important. Like, you know, like I said before, it's, it feels good to like see that I'm helping make a difference versus just kind of feeling helpless and seeing like my community around me, you know, not doing so great. So. It's like a start officer with your first and your last name and can you spell it out? You bet, first name David, last name Unru, U-N-R-U-H. All right, and can you tell me what it is we're doing here today? Yeah, absolutely. So what you're seeing today is you're seeing the example of the citizen airman and citizen soldier responding to the state's call and said, we have a need, we have an emergency, we have an emergent request to support our state, and this is how we're coming to fill it. And so they're coming out here to support all of our local and regional hospitals to fill in where they've got gaps and needs. You know, this morning's mobilization is for our specific wing for the air guards. We're bringing, you know, a few hundred at a time, but I think by the time we're all of a sudden down to about 1500, both airmen and soldiers participating throughout the state, north, south, and central Oregon. Now, it's last year and a half has been quite the tasking for the Oregon Guard. Can you tell me how you feel about, you know, having to send your airmen out again for helping the community in an emergency? Yeah, I think I can sum up in one word is I'm thankful. I'm thankful to the airmen. I'm thankful to the community that both supports us and then accepts us when we come in to help them. It has been hard, but it's shown us that we work together, that we, you know, that we're airmen, we're soldiers that we come from the communities that we live in, we work in and we grow up in, and then our desire is to serve and protect those communities and this is where we get to do it. So it's, I'm thankful. Well, I mean, just what they're doing speaks to themselves. The fact that as I watch all the airmen walk in, I have airmen that are highly technical at fixing radars or aircraft mechanics or doing any number of military specialties and, but their number one military specialty is service and protecting their nation. And they're doing that today. We're gonna ask them to do something that, that we don't train them to do day in and day out, but they're gonna step up and answer the call and that's the kind of airmen we have in the 142nd. The reason they're the best in the world is because we can give them a task, give them a little bit of training and they're gonna step up and answer it and they're gonna knock it out of the park.