NAVAL STATION EVERETT — For years, Erika Storbeck’s recruiter fixed her dinner, helped her with homework and worried about her coming home late from dates.
The serve-your-country sales pitch that stretched for years ended Friday as Storbeck raised her right hand and enlisted in the Air Force National Guard. Her recruiter — who is also her mother — stood by Storbeck’s side with a wide smile.
Her other proud parent also was close, but far, far away. Appearing on a video screen from Camp Doha in Kuwait, her father, Lt. Col. John Storbeck, not only got to watch his daughter enlist but also helped her join.
Dressed in desert camouflage fatigues, the Army Reservist took a short break from his duties in the Persian Gulf to read his daughter the oath of enlistment.
"You sure about this, Erika?" her father asked.
"Yeah, pretty sure," she said.
"I’m proud of you," he told his daughter, because she was stepping forward even though she knew what the commitment would mean.
In his case, he had to leave his family on Camano Island at Halloween for a one-year tour in Kuwait with the 335th Theater Signal Command. He’s a supervisor in information services for Snohomish County in civilian life.
Storbeck, 18, has spent her whole life around the military. Her grandfather is a retired Air Force pilot. And her mother, Air National Guard Master Sgt. Jane Storbeck, spent 14 years on active duty in the Air Force.
Jane Storbeck met her husband at the military in-processing station in Seattle, when he stepped in to fill an impromptu call for a Fort Lawton officer to come over and swear in new enlistees. The couple has been married almost 20 years. It’s meant many military-mandated moves, including a two-year stay in Bahrain when Erika was 1.
Erika Storbeck said the chance to travel was one of the reasons she wanted to enlist. "I already saw the world, and I don’t remember it. So I want to see it again," she said.
She’ll leave for basic training in Texas this spring, then attend two more schools for advanced training before she returns to her first duty assignment.
Storbeck will learn to install communications systems, but that will bring her back home. She will join the Air National Guard’s 215th Engineer Installation Squadron at Paine Field in Everett.
Her mom, a recruiter with the 215th, said she had been pestering her daughter to enlist, mainly because of the education benefits. "I’ve been bugging her about it for a long time," Master Sgt. Storbeck said.
"I knew it was something she would want to do," her mother recalled. "As a little kid, she always aspired to be like Dad. She wanted to be saluted when she came through the gate."
Erika Storbeck, a 2003 graduate of Stanwood High School, had thought about applying to West Point and following her father’s footsteps at the academy. Those plans changed.
"The classic girl thing: I met a boy and decided not to go," she said.
Her mom said she was surprised when her daughter called to say she wanted to sign up. "I kind of quit riding her," her mother said.
Erika Storbeck has been working at Sears and is a quarter away from finishing a two-year degree at Skagit Valley College in Mount Vernon. She has plans to become an elementary school teacher and eventually, a school superintendent.
"She just called me out of the blue and said, ‘OK, I’m ready to do this,’ " her mother recalled.
Master Sgt. Storbeck, though, remembered her days as a civilian employee at Naval Station Everett, and the videoconferencing system that lets sailors on ships at sea have face-to-face talks with their loved ones at home.
The Navy agreed to let the system be used for the Storbecks’ enlistment ceremony. The cost was mostly just a long-distance phone call from Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Ga., where the satellite feed was routed to a landline.
From Kuwait, Lt. Col. Storbeck said he was glad his daughter was enlisting, even if she isn’t joining the Army.
"I think the Air Guard will be OK. At least it’s not the Navy," he joked.
Though Erika Storbeck already knows how to make a bed with crisp corners, her military service-savvy parents have given her some advice for making it through basic training.
"Don’t volunteer for anything," Erika Storbeck said with a laugh. "Don’t smile; just look straight ahead. Blend in. Become a wallflower."
Reporter Brian Kelly: 425-339-3422 or kelly@heraldnet.com.
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