GUILFORD – In May, when Joe Ocasio participated in a motorcycle ride to raise money for the wounded soldiers receiving treatment at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, he never expected his own son would be occupying a bed at the same hospital a few months later.
“It was a good run and it was for a good cause,” Ocasio said, of the annual ride organized by the American Legion Riders from Post 189 in Norwich. “I never thought three months later my son would be in there.”
On Aug. 13, Ocasio received the phone call every parent with a child in the military dreads. His son, 24-year old Marine Lance Corporal Randy Lopez, had been wounded in Afghanistan.
“It was confusion at the beginning,” reported Ocasio, who said he and his daughter-in-law received conflicting reports about what happened to Lopez.
What they’ve been able to piece together is that Lopez - who is attached to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine (also known as “Hell in a Helmet”) - was on foot patrol with 11 other Marines. They were returning to base when an improvised explosive devise, commonly referred to as an IED or roadside bomb, went off. According to his father, the 2005 Bainbridge-Guilford graduate took the brunt of the explosion, partially shielding at least one of his fellow Marines.
“It sounded like an ambush,” Ocasio said, explaining that after the initial blast, which knocked his son unconscious, the unit took on enemy fire. Several others were wounded in the exchange. They encountered a second IED, as well, but it did not detonate.
According to Lopez’ mother, Cynthia, she and her husband aren’t sure where in Afghanistan the fire fight took place.
“He couldn’t tell us,” she explained. But she does know he was removed by helicopter to Craig Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram Air Base, approximately 25 miles north of Kabul. There, she said, he was treated for wounds to both legs, his left arm and shoulder.
“I guess in Afghanistan, they did whatever they could,” Cynthia Ocasio reported. Then, some time between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, he was transported to Landstuhl.
When she and her husband spoke to him on Thursday, he had undergone surgery to further clean the wounds he described to them as “gaping holes.”
Despite his ordeal, and the hearing loss he sustained in his left ear which may or may not be permanent, the Ocasios said their son was “in good spirits.”
“He’s like me. We try to make other people happy and not ourselves,” Cynthia said, describing his interactions with the hospital’s nursing staff - with whom she and her husband have also spoken.
They have learned that Lopez will soon be transferred once more, this time to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
“We’re going,” Joe Ocasio said.
She and her son have a close relationship, she explained. It broke her heart, she said, when he joined the military, but she knew it was what he had always wanted.
“We always stood by him,” she said.
Her pride in her son is evident in the Marine Corps emblem earrings dangling from her ears, and the ring she wears on her right hand - the woman’s version of the ring her son was awarded upon his graduation from Parris Island in 2007. Her husband jokingly chides her about the “Marine Corps Mom” bumper sticker on her car, and a coffee mug with a similar logo that she has at work. Their pride, though, isn’t just in their son, but all those in the military.
“I don’t just think about Randy,” she explained, as she turned the ring on her hand. “I think about all of them.”
“It’s like a family,” her husband said, explaining the sense of community they feel with others who have children in the military. His son had a chance to meet some of that support network in July, when he visited home shortly before being deployed to Afghanistan.
During the trip, the family went to a bike night at Gilligan’s in Sherburne. Lopez’ upcoming deployment had been announced, and many of those present had taken the time to wish him well – including some of those who had been on the Landstuhl ride in May, Ocasio said.
Lopez had only been in Afghanistan three weeks before he was wounded, according to his father. But it wasn’t the young Marine’s first experience in combat; he had already completed a tour in Iraq before this most recent deployment. Despite his injuries, Ocasio said his son is still committed to doing what he sees as his duty to his country.
“He wants to go back,” he said.