COPPERAS COVE — When Eleny Guerrero first came to the United States from her native Dominican Republic at age 12, she spoke no English, had an estranged relationship with a mother she had not seen in six years, and wound up joining the military and going to war after she got kicked out of the house a third time.
Although she quickly learned the language and continued to excel at school in Boston, Mass., her dream of going to college on a scholarship did not pan out and she found herself homeless at 17 years old, with no idea what to do next but never giving up hope.
“When I moved, I didn’t know any English whatsoever,” the 38-year-old Copperas Cove resident said. “All I knew was, ‘Hi.’ That was it. My parents were already divorced by then, so not only am I coming to the United States — a whole new world — but now I’m coming to a broken home.
“I’m the oldest out of four girls, so I was constantly home baby-sitting. My mom had three jobs. I even got knocked down in school from 10th grade to 8th grade, because I didn’t have the (proper) paperwork from back home.
“I was always really good in school. I graduated with honors with a 3.8 (grade point average), but I was rebelling as a teenager and so me and my mom butted heads a lot. She kicked me out at least three times from the age of 13 to 17. She thought I was smoking weed, because my friends were smoking, but I never did it. Then something happened with my sister and I felt betrayed by her. I wasn’t close to my dad, because I always thought he didn’t want me in his life, which I found out later that wasn’t the case.
“The last time she kicked me out, I just grabbed all my stuff and left. I just got tired of it, and so I moved in with friends. My mom didn’t want to help me (with applying) to go on to school, so I wound up going to community college and losing a scholarship that I had applied for. I felt like a failure.”
In 2002, Guerrero turned 18 years old and decided the only way to pursue her dreams was to join the military. So that’s what she did.
Things did not get off to a flying start.
“I mainly went into the military for them to pay for my school,” she said. “My sister was the one who kind of brought up the idea and I just kind of ran with it. It sounded like a good idea because I was no longer living at home, and I really didn’t know what else to do.
“When I took my test (military entrance exam), I got food poisoning the day of the test. I scored really low because I was in and out of the testing room, throwing up. They gave me a position as a cook and I just took it. I needed to do something with my life.”
She wound up stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, and served two deployments to the Middle East, where she worked as a cook and also saw some fairly hazardous duty.
“The first deployment, we were in Kuwait before everything kind of took off, but the second deployment, I was in Balad, in Iraq (50 miles north of Baghdad).
“Even though that was where the airfield was at, we used to get mortared a lot. Around that time, they had one of the locals bring bombs into the chow hall and blew it up. We also had to go on convoys, so just because we were cooks didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t put us on (combat) missions.”
Guerrero served four years in the Army and three years in the Reserves. When she left active duty, she became a correctional officer for the state prison system in Salina, Kansas, and got married to a soldier. They were sent to New Mexico for a while, and then out to California, where she took a job as a front gate security guard at Fort Irwin. Next came a stint working security at a missile testing facility back in New Mexico, where she had a baby, and in 2015 the couple moved to Central Texas, where she worked again as a gate guard and hospital security officer at Fort Hood.
She did that for about three years, and due in part to her husband’s fourth overseas deployment, the marriage did not work out and she was on her own.
By that time, she had earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, mostly online, and later earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen.
Two years ago, she did an internship at the Veterans Affairs readjustment center in Harker Heights and was hired on as a full-time counselor a year later.
“When I started working (security) at the hospital here on post, I was tired of being the one always telling people what to do. I really wanted to help people,” Guerrero said.
“Then, also, my ex-husband has severe PTSD. I also have PTSD but it’s not to the level that he has it. But seeing him going through stuff and me going through my own issues, I felt like mental health counseling was the path I needed to go in order for me to feel fulfilled.
“It felt very paralyzing not being able to help your significant other. You think you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing (to help), but you really don’t understand. You love them and you want to help them, but you don’t know what to do.”
Although her counseling job is a dream come true, Guerrero felt she had more to offer. So back in February, she opened her own private counseling practice, Courage 2 Overcome Counseling and Consulting Services, PLLC. The business is just getting off the ground, but she has high hopes, and also plans to start a nonprofit service to help qualified, needy people throughout the region.
“It’s been a vision of mine for many years, so I’m really excited about it. The job I have now was part of my five-year goal a year ago. I wanted my own private practice, and now it’s happening.
“It sounds cliché, but I just never stop dreaming. To me, there’s no limits to our dreams.
“To me, it’s like … how can I help my community and give back? I want to help anybody, including counseling in Spanish, because I know that’s an under-served community in this area, and even in the Austin area, too.
“It’s kind of like I told the provider of this workshop I went to a few weeks ago … I told her, ‘At the end of the day, I want to be my own hero.’
“I want to be able to leave a legacy that says, ‘She cared for others.’”
For more information on Guerrero’s private counseling services, go to: https://www.facebook.com/courage2overcomecounseling, or call 512-931-1142.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.