 The Indian tribes that was here before apparently put a curse on the valley that if you stay here for any short amount of time, even like a month or two, and you leave, you're going to want to come back. And if you want to actually leave, you have to take dirt with you, and then you're okay. But if not, it will always draw you back. The valley will always draw you back, and I actually, I kind of believe in that curse now a little bit, because I'm back here again. I am 81 Aubrey Blair, and I am a recruiter at Navy Recruiting Station Grand Junction. It's a small town. You don't have to worry about your kids walking home from school, rush hour traffic. You don't have any of that. It's nice. It's out. If you enjoy the outdoors, it's perfect. Mountain biking is 20 minutes away. Skiing is 30 minutes away. It's just a nice, easy place to live, really. I knew I wanted to do recruiting before I went to boot camp. That being in this office and seeing how it operated and seeing what they did, I was like, yeah, I'll be a recruiter. Eventually I'll be a recruiter. I'll do some fun things with airplanes first and then come back and be a recruiter. I joined the Navy in 2007. I had just done a year of college, or most of a year of college, so from college straight into the Navy, went to Great Lakes like everybody else does, went to A-School in San Diego, and then I went to VAQ 137 in Whidbey Island, Washington. I did one deployment on the USS Enterprise in 2010, and now I'm here in recruiting. Now, 81 really set the world on fire out here. She came out, she was motivated, she has family support, which helps a lot, but she came out on a mission to do a good job, and she's done exactly that. When I first got here, it was difficult at first. You have to go around, you have to build relationships, you have to talk to people, you have to talk to everyone. But once you've built those relationships, we haven't really had to work hard at recruiting since then, because those people, once they know how great the Navy is and they know what it's all about, they send people to you. You don't even have to recruit anymore, so it becomes easy after that. I can just walk into a classroom, if it's a teacher I know, and just say, hey, and they'll let me do pretty much anything I need to. It's nice just going back there because the principal knows me and everybody else there knows me, just walking through the halls, oh, hi again, it's just, it's nice to go back to that. It makes it easier because they don't look at you as a recruiter. They look at you as a former student, and I think the trust, it's easier to trust once you know, it's somebody that you know, not just a brand new person going in there, so it makes it a little bit easier to get in. I think it's awesome. It's one of the best recruiting efforts that can happen is when a student who knows our community and knows our school can come back and talk to the kids, honestly, about what happens in the military. Hi, United States Sailor. Recruiting isn't for everybody, and some people are going to like it, and some people aren't just like any duty, but it's rewarding just the same. Even if you don't like it, when you go back into the fleet or even when you get out, thinking back on the people that you've put in and how they've changed, it's still rewarding. It still gives you a sense of accomplishment and a sense that you actually did something. I just really appreciate everything that she's done, because it makes me feel like that my dreams aren't just like everyone else's. It makes me feel like I have my own story and she's helping me create my story, and I just really appreciate everything that she's done for me. You changed the world a little bit, one Sailor at a time, really.