Pandemic spells opportunity for raw Coast Guard cadets
NEW LONDON, Conn. — Branyelle Carillo was facing the prospect of a summer marooned by the pandemic at the Coast Guard Academy in New London when she was called up for a mission: The cutter Munro, bound for a patrol of the U.S. maritime border with Russia, had lost a tenth of its crew to quarantine and needed reinforcements.
Within two days, Carillo and 15 other students from the academy, some of whom had never been on a ship before, were part of its crew. She and 10 other second-year students, known as third class cadets, were sent to join five seniors, or first class cadets, who had earlier been assigned to the cutter.
“The list came out and we just got up and went,” she said. “They just ’voluntold’ us. It was exciting."
The Munro had embarked from California in late June for the patrol when one of its crew members tested positive for the coronavirus. Contact tracing resulted in 14 shipmates being ordered into quarantine for two weeks.
Capt. Blake Novak said that didn’t leave him with enough service members to sail. He came up with the idea of replacing them with cadets, having heard that much of the fleet was canceling internships and summer shadowing opportunities because of the pandemic.
“We were the only option to be up there and patrolling; there was no backup option,” Novak said. “I needed to be there.”
The cadets, tested and coronavirusfree, took over the menial jobs on the 418foot Munro such as washing dishes and cleaning its small boats. But they also became qualified to handle the ship's lines, become lookouts and perform safety duties such as firefighting. They also received initial training at the helm.
The cadets helped launch the boats that boarded fishing vessels, kept an eye out for Russians and were charged with preventing the ship from running into the pods of orcas and other whales they spotted along the way.
“There was this one time we were doing a boarding and there was a blue whale that breached out of the water, right next to the boat,” said 19-year-old Cadet Tyler Huynh of Mount Laurel, New Jersey. “I was on lookout for that. It was just so sick, but it was also kind of scary because it was so close.”
The cadets spent 52 days at sea, traveling from the Arctic Circle to Hawaii to participate in naval exercises. They explored an uninhabited island that was filled with hot springs and spent time alongside a Russian patrol boat, communicating with it by signal flag.
The tender ages of the cadets, ranging from 19 to 22, turned out to be an advantage in one critical situation, Novak said.
The ship was spending an off day in port at Dutch Harbor on Amaknak Island in Alaska when the captain got word of a large storm headed their way. The cutter had to leave in the middle of the night to stay ahead of the weather or be stuck in port for four days, potentially missing the start of the Pacific Rim exercises.
Much of the crew had been attending a barbecue on shore, where alcoholic beverages were served. A 12-hour “bottle to throttle” rule meant that only those who were not drinking that day were allowed to perform the jobs needed to get the Munro underway.
“We were all nervous, because it was just us and maybe three other qualified people who weren’t drunk handling the lines,” said Carillo, 20, of Aberdeen, Maryland. “So we just had to figure it out. We were nervous.”
The cadets said the experience on the Munro, made possible only because of the pandemic, was life-changing.
Cadet Malia Haskovec of Dumfries, Virginia, had been planning a career on shore, perhaps inspecting private boats. Now, she wants to be out at sea doing law enforcement.
“Seeing the adventure, the excitement, the hard work, the grit and determination that is required to be underway, I just kind of fell in love with it,” she said.
WASHINGTON — The notifications wouldn’t stop. It had been 24 hours since former Vice President Joe Biden announced that Sen. Kamala Harris would be his running mate in his quest to win the White House. Soon after, the phone of the Democratic Party’s chief fundraiser was buzzing every other minute, alerting him that the campaign had just received another donation of exactly $19.08.
It’s not uncommon for campaigns to solicit donations for particular amounts, like $7 or $23, to make the ask stand out, but a number that precise, down to the red cent, was strange.
“I’ve never seen people give in such a specific increment ever before,” said Clayton Cox, finance director for the Democratic National Committee. But Cox, who was active in his college’s Greek system, knew why.
The women of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. were springing into action to support one of their own, Harris, who pledged at Howard University as an undergrad in the 1980s.
But why $19.08? That’s the year the AKA, the oldest Black sorority in America, was founded. “The week after she was announced, I was getting one every 15 minutes,” said Cox. “It was that frequent.”
As of Friday, the Biden Victory Fund (a joint fundraising effort between the campaign and the DNC) had received more than 11,000 such donations totaling almost $219,000, according to DNC Deputy Communications Director Chris Meagher.
Since Harris launched her own presidential bid in 2019, many have described her sorority as a “secret weapon.” But anyone who’s spent time around members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. knows there’s nothing secret about their pride in the organization.
“Family is my beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha, our Divine 9 and my HBCU (historically Black colleges and universities) brothers and sisters,” Harris said while accepting the vice presidential nomination at this year’s convention.
Cox said he’s also seen specific donation amounts from other black Greek organizations — known as the “Divine 9.”