California National Guard

Army Spc. Kathy Tanson, who grew up on a farm in Corning in Northern California, is wrestling goats and sheep into submission so they can be vaccinated against parasites and anthrax. Spc. Jose Lopez, who worked at his uncle's irrigation company in Tulare County, is putting headlocks on cattle so they stand still for their shots, one for rabies and another one to provide a vitamin boost to help them through the brutal Afghan winter. And Col. Eric Grimm, who attended veterinary school before joining the military, is demonstrating the proper way to subdue a balky donkey without getting kicked: Grab it by the head with one hand, and lift up its tail with the other.

President Obama was aboard his Marine One helicopter flying to a celebrity-studded fundraiser in Holmby Hills last February when a single-engine plane, flying radio silent, breached a no-fly zone over Los Angeles. An ear-piercing horn rocketed Capt. Luke Campagne to his feet 50 miles away. His G-suit already strapped on, Campagne sprinted out of a windowless, cinder block barracks at Riverside's March Air Reserve Base to an F-16 fighter jet waiting in a hangar. Within minutes, two Fighting Falcons screamed over Hemet, then banked west toward Long Beach, crossing the Santa Ana Mountains at a hair below supersonic speeds - guns and missiles "hot.

The California National Guard hopes to expand its drug interdiction efforts in the wake of the Border Ranger II operation last May on the U. S.-Mexico border, the Guard's top officer said Monday. Adjutant Gen. Robert Thrasher called the monthlong operation, which deployed 405 reservists at legal and illegal border crossings and in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, "a model" for military efforts against drug smuggling nationwide.

When Sean Walsh was 8 or 9 years old, his mother recalled, he'd knock on a friend's door in his San Jose neighborhood, and if the boy wasn't home, he'd ask for his sister. If she wasn't there, he would settle for whoever was home. "So what are you doing?" he would ask the other kids' mom and invite himself in, said his mother, Cheryl Walsh. "That was Sean," she said. "I can't tell you how many of the neighbors felt like he was a part of their families. " Many from the old neighborhood now mourn Walsh, as do others who knew him from Prospect High School in Saratoga, the Santa Clara Police Department's Explorer program and the California Army National Guard's 185th Military Police Battalion, 49th Military Police Brigade in Pittsburg, northeast of Berkeley.

Thirty-two years ago, Brig. Gen. Daniel J. Hernandez balked at the opportunity to earn his commission. It was fear, he said, that he wasn't officer material. His fear, to say the least, was unfounded. Today, Hernandez is the highest-ranking Latino in the California Army National Guard and commanding general of the huge 40th Infantry Division, headquartered at the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center.

After years of cutbacks, the citizen soldiers California turns to in times of trouble have begun to receive a new infusion of money and modernized gear. At National Guard armories across Southern California, money for spare parts simply dried up through much of the 1990s, as the nation's military downsized. During the worst of it two years ago, Platoon Sgt. Kenneth La Mere recalls, about 90% of the vehicles at his Gardena armory were inoperable.

When uniformed troops from the California National Guard end their seven-month deployment at Los Angeles International Airport next week, they will do so knowing that they helped make the airport a safer place, the guard's top officer said Sunday. "The physical presence of our military here, I think, has had a great impact," said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe Jr., head of the California National Guard. "LAX is as safe as it's ever been."

A California National Guard artillery unit was scheduled to leave this morning for duty in Bosnia, where the soldiers will spend seven months supporting a United Nations peacekeeping force. The soldiers from F Battery 144th Field Artillery will be the first California Guard unit to serve in Europe in a combat capacity since World War I. The 80-man unit operates sophisticated radar, which detects rifle, artillery, mortar and rocket bursts and directs counter-fire in seconds.

In the months after an intruder stole a National Guard M-60 tank and went on a destructive rampage in San Diego, military brass from the Pentagon to Sacramento scrambled to order an exhaustive investigation of California National Guard security readiness. Conclusion: It was lousy then and not so hot now.

Daniel J. Hernandez, resplendent in his crisp National Guard uniform, looked out at the audience that had come to honor him at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Los Alamitos. Once a private, Hernandez now stood before the assemblage as one of the top military officers in the nation: a newly promoted major general. His wife, Dorothy, had just affixed the two silver stars on his shoulder. A letter from Gov.

Reporting from Greenfield, Calif. -- The story of the California Army National Guard's 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment is mostly in the record books now: 17 soldiers killed, more than 100 wounded, 11 Army Commendations for Valor, more than 80 Purple Hearts. Lt. Col. Patrick Frey knows there is still one chapter to be written — his own. It's been seven years since he took command of the 1-184 and led more than 700 soldiers into combat in Baghdad. A schoolteacher back home, Frey became the face of a grand military experiment — to move the National Guard's "weekend warriors" from the reserve to the combat front.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Gen. David Baldwin as the new head of the state National Guard on Saturday, swearing in the Afghanistan veteran at a California Cadet Corps celebration here. Brown took a short break from his campaign on the state budget to join the ceremony, looking on as hundreds of elementary, middle and high school Cadet Corps members from around California marched in unison to a National Guard band at Los Alamitos Army Airfield. The cadet program is dear to Brown's heart.

The contingent of National Guard troops scheduled for deployment next month at the California- Mexico border will be smaller and more narrowly focused than past missions, aiming at front-line deterrence rather than building fences and roads, according to federal officials. The 224 California National Guard members are part of President Obama's move to bolster enforcement efforts along the entire U.S-Mexico border, first announced in May. Most of the 1,200 National Guard troops heading to the frontier, about 550, are going to Arizona, the major illegal immigration corridor into the U.S. The California contingent will be posted at strategic areas across San Diego County and will drive U.S. Border Patrol vehicles, using binoculars and night-vision goggles to spot incursions and report them to federal agents, according to Kim Holman, a National Guard spokeswoman.

Mary J. Kight, already the first woman general in the California National Guard, will become the group's first female leader Tuesday. She will also be the first African American woman at the helm of any national guard in the country. Kight, 59, a Republican who lives in Sacramento, recognizes that for some, these are important firsts. "It depends on who is looking at me," she said. "If it's important to them, then you know, I acknowledge that it is also important. But . . . I am doing my job. I am doing what I am asked to do."

Army Spc. Kathy Tanson, who grew up on a farm in Corning in Northern California, is wrestling goats and sheep into submission so they can be vaccinated against parasites and anthrax. Spc. Jose Lopez, who worked at his uncle's irrigation company in Tulare County, is putting headlocks on cattle so they stand still for their shots, one for rabies and another one to provide a vitamin boost to help them through the brutal Afghan winter. And Col. Eric Grimm, who attended veterinary school before joining the military, is demonstrating the proper way to subdue a balky donkey without getting kicked: Grab it by the head with one hand, and lift up its tail with the other.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger renewed his push Tuesday for $3.6 million to help finance college education for the citizen soldiers of the California National Guard. The governor called it "unconscionable" that California is the only state in the nation that does not provide tuition assistance to the men and women of the Guard. "It's a mark of shame on our great state," Schwarzenegger said at a news conference in the Capitol rotunda. "It's a terrible wrong that must be made right." A bill by state Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto)

After years of cutbacks, the citizen soldiers California turns to in times of trouble have begun to receive a new infusion of money and modernized gear. At National Guard armories across Southern California, money for spare parts simply dried up through much of the 1990s, as the nation's military downsized. During the worst of it two years ago, platoon sergeant Kenneth La Mere recalls, about 90% of the vehicles at his Gardena armory were inoperable.

A broad-ranging legal challenge to the year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military was filed this week on behalf of a California Army National Guardsman recently discharged for stating that he is gay. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Tuesday, joins a long line of court cases seeking to overturn the Pentagon's anti-gay regulations. This effort invokes some new arguments, principally that the ouster of 1st Lt.

While they have been beating back wildfires across the state and fighting wars on two fronts overseas, the citizen soldiers of the California National Guard have also been waging a battle in the Legislature -- and losing. For the second year in a row, state lawmakers have rebuffed the Guard's effort to win state money to help cover the cost of college for its members. State military officials say their only hope now is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will prevail upon Democratic legislators to include money for tuition assistance in the budget that is 49 days overdue and more than $15 billion in the red. California is the only state that gives no educational benefit to National Guard members.

Firefighters on Tuesday continued to battle a fusillade of wildfires plaguing Northern California, including a destructive blaze that has charred homes and threatened tourist haunts along the Big Sur coast. With more than 425,000 acres burned, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the California National Guard to deploy ground forces for the first time in three decades to help weary firefighters battling blazes from Kern County to the Oregon border.