SAN DIEGO — With Iraq behind him but never out of his mind, Army Pfc. David Foss has begun making plans for life after the military. The 25-year-old Irvine resident, who lost his left leg three months ago to an improvised explosive device in Iraq, has started talking to potential employers about jobs.
Foss, who wants to be a police officer, was one of more than 100 active-duty servicemen and servicewomen who attended a job fair Tuesday at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, featuring representatives from about 70 corporations and government agencies. Foss, who is in a wheelchair, came with a group from Naval Medical Center in San Diego.
"My life has changed. I've gotten over losing my leg. There's nothing I can do about it but move forward," Foss said. "I hope my prosthesis doesn't hold me back. It's all mental. If you think you can do it, you can. I can do it."
The Hiring Heroes Career Fair, sponsored by the Department of Defense, is part of the agency's "continuum of seamless service" for wounded warriors, said Deputy Under Secretary Patricia S. Bradshaw. Eleven such events have been held over the last two years, but Tuesday's event was the first on the West Coast, she said.
Not all the soldiers, sailors and Marines who met with prospective employers were disabled, but a number of them, like Foss, were maneuvering wheelchairs around the display tables.
There were no signs of self-pity in the base officers' club, where the event was held; instead, plenty of compassion and tenderness were on display. Some young warriors pushed their friends' wheelchairs; others offered their shoulders to buddies struggling to balance themselves on wobbly canes.
It was that can-do attitude and spirit of teamwork that Michael J. Moran of Northrop Grumman Corp. said he has been looking for in job applicants. He talked Tuesday with Marine Cpl. Josiah White, who lost most of the hearing in his right ear and had his left leg nearly shattered by a suicide bomber in Iraq two years ago.
White, 22, of Colorado Springs, asked Moran what kind of job he could qualify for at an aerospace company if his background in the Marine Corps was as a grenadier.
"You've got other qualifications that appeal to us. Don't limit yourself to a particular skill," Moran said.
He offered White a job on the spot, but the Marine said he did not know when he would get his medical discharge because he did not know when his rehabilitation would end.
