Brooker, from wrestling match to rescue helicopter on Gulf Coast
By MERI-JO BORZILLERI
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – This weekend, Anthony Brooker was supposed to be sweating in a singlet at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, part of USA Wrestling’s world team training camp.
Instead, it’s likely Brooker has saved a few lives before you ate Sunday morning’s breakfast.
A helicopter pilot for the U.S. Air Force, Brooker on Saturday was scheduled to fly above a flooded New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, plucking people from rooftops and inside houses.
He has been deployed to help those still stranded from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.
His duties read like a hero’s to-do list: transport ill patients from hospitals; perform search and rescue; make food and water drops; recover bodies.
It’s a mission that might last two weeks or two months. Brooker doesn’t know. He’s ranked No.4 nationally in Greco-Roman wrestling in the 55kg/121-pound class. He’s an Olympic hopeful for 2008.
On Friday night, he was simply hopeful.
On a layover before arriving in Mississippi, Brooker, 27, spoke rapid-fire, the adrenaline audible through the telephone line.
His Huey helicopter is infrared equipped. He and a crew of four or five people will fly with night-vision goggles, “so you can find people under houses at night, or in houses, or on roofs.
“Anybody that’s still alive that’s able to give any signal with heat we can find them, “he said.
Helicopters will be flying 24 hours a day, in shifts of two or three hours at a time.
Before he left from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Friday, Brooker and crew were given 9-millimeter pistols. They will enter hostile territory. People, Brooker has heard, have been shooting at helicopters and aid workers.
“It’s crazy, “he said.
Even crazier is carrying a pistol on a humanitarian mission.
Brooker has been in the military for five years. He attended The Citadel, a military college. His dad recently retired after 26 years with the U.S. Marine Corps. Still, the pistols make him uncomfortable.
“I’m not really one to use a weapon that often. I don’t even think we should be carrying them, “he said. “That sends the wrong message. … When you use a show of force, it gives them an us-against-them principle.”
As surreal as this sounds, a military man reluctant to carry a gun, it’s no less surreal than what Brooker is facing.
He’s been deployed – not to Iraq, but to New Orleans.
“I definitely didn’t think I was going to be in a situation where there’s martial law in my own country, “he said.
Still, “I am excited about it. I’ve been to 41 states. To help people really in need, it’s really serious down there. I didn’t think it’d get to the point where there are people starving to death.”
Brooker’s usual job is security – protecting intercontinental ballistic missiles at Vandenberg. He also has piloted helicopters over California brush fires, lowering water buckets and supplies. But he can’t think about that now, or about wrestling.
“There’s only one way to help and I’m going to put 100 percent into it, “he said. “We’re definitely going to be in a dangerous situation, flying above a city we’re not familiar with … if my mind was somewhere else, it would be a detriment to my crew and the people I’m flying with.”
Brooker placed fourth in the 2004 Olympic trials, and has spent months at a time in Colorado Springs at wrestling camps. He hopes to be transferred to Colorado Springs in February, so he can train full time. He dreams of making the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Funny how life works sometimes. Turns out, Brooker’s one moment in time is now.
“You only live once, “he said, “and there’s people out there dying.”
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