As a young teenager, Adais A. “Tony” Garcia, Jr., was running with gangs and headed down a dangerous road. After becoming involved in a crime, Tony found himself in court facing a grim and possible short future. Instead, a deal was worked out with a judge: when Tony was old enough, he would join the United States Army. And that deal put Adais on a whole different path.
Adais went on to serve an extraordinary 37 years in the Army, much of it in the Military Police, rising through the enlisted ranks to become a Sergeant Major. His long career included service connected to Operation Garden Plot during the Los Angeles riots, Operation Noble Eagle, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Jump Start, and Operation New Dawn. In Iraq, he served at the Multi-National Corps-Iraq level overseeing and tracking military police operations throughout the theater and later as NCOIC of a Personal Security Detachment conducting convoy and security missions. His decorations include the Bronze Star, two Army Commendation Medals, and the Combat Action Badge.
Tony also carries an unusual American family history. He traces his ancestry to Nathaniel Jackson, a Cherokee settler who brought his family from Alabama to the Rio Grande Valley in 1857, along with eleven formerly enslaved people whom Jackson had freed and who chose to remain with the family. Jackson established a ranch near the Rio Grande, became fiercely loyal to the Union, and, according to local histories, helped enslaved people escape to freedom and served as an intelligence agent for Union forces during the Civil War.
Join us on VBC LIVE for a remarkable conversation about crime and second chances, war and military service, plus the inspiration he finds in his family history. Most of all, we want to understand how a wayward teenager headed full-blast down a dead-end road become a career soldier entrusted with leading other in war.
Read about Adais in Iraq in 2010: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/52963/sustainment-brigades-personal-security-detachment-conducts-first-mission
