Branch: Coast Guard
Duty: Fireman
By Emily Wunderlich
Her love of adventure and desire to help others were what drew Kaitlyn Mollo, 28, to the Coast Guard.
“We had boats and campers all my life, so I was on the water since day one,” she said. “I always saw the Coast Guard when we were at the beach and everything, so I always thought it was really cool.”
Mollo was born and raised in New York with a cop for a father and a nurse’s aide for a mother. She said it was her parents’ careers that gave her a “normal upbringing of always helping people.” Her proximity to 9/11 only reinforced that upbringing.
Mollo was 16 when she graduated from Binghamton High School. Her dream was to become a doctor, so she planned to attend Broome Community College and then transfer to Syracuse University. After her first semester, though, she took a semester off before deciding to enlist in 2008.
“It’s like I wasn’t mature enough to be put into college life,” she said. “My dad told me to kind of figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Two weeks after that conversation, the Coast Guard had called me, so I was like ‘Sure, why not.’ They made the decision for me.”
The day Mollo left for boot camp was the day her father retired as a police officer.
“When you’re a police officer, you can retire after 25 years,” Mollo said. “He was at 26 years, so he waited until I was done with high school and he did the extra year.”
After eight weeks of basic training at Cape May, New Jersey, Mollo was stationed in South Padre Island, Texas, for all five and a half years of her enlistment.
She still had high hopes of becoming a doctor, but the wait time to become a corpsman was five years. So she became a fireman instead, where she dealt with boat engines, damage control, search and rescue, law enforcement, drugs, immigration and fisheries.
She spent the first three years at a small boat station and her remaining two and a half aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Amberjack, an 87-foot ship.
“At that time, no females had been on that sized ship yet, so there was a few of us that were the first ones to kind of test out if it would work with the way the birthing areas are set up and everything,” Mollo said.
Of the 12 crew members aboard the Amberjack, Mollo was the only female until the cook arrived six months before she retired. She was also the only female in her unit’s engineering department.
“Girls got accused of sleeping with people all the time to try and get ahead,” she said. “We always got told that we were always faking sick if anything was ever wrong with us.
“I can do my job just as good, if not better, as any other guy here,” she said. “So it was kind of annoying in that sense.”
She recalls when she was the fifth one in her unit to tear her meniscus.
“Our old commanding officer had us running all the time,” she said. “But when it happened to me — and there was two other girls that it happened to as well — we were accused of wanting to get out of (physical training).”
She also said her male counterparts would place bets on who could sleep with the new females first.
“A lot of people go straight out of high school, so we missed our college years,” she said. “My college years, I spent in the military. I’m still going through the same things other people would in college, just at a different situation. Easier to get in trouble, a little bit worse consequences.”
Although Mollo said her superiors didn’t promote sexist behavior, they also didn’t do enough to prevent it.
“You definitely do get discouraged and angry, but it’s easy to get in trouble there,” she said.
“You kind of just put your head down and do your work. Most of the time, you prove yourself through your work.”
Since Mollo chose not to pursue a career as a corpsman, she remained an E-3 until she retired in 2014.
“It kind of sucked being the same rank for six years, especially when you’re at the bottom of the totem pole,” she said. “It definitely wears on you. So I was just ready to not do it anymore.”
Leaving the Coast Guard was “kind of unexpected” for Mollo, who had signed a six-year contract. But during her last six months in, she injured her shoulder, back and elbow during an operation.
“I could still do things, I just got to decide if I wanted to get out or stay and go to (corpsman) school,” she said.
After retiring, she enrolled at USF St. Petersburg, where she found an alarming lack of support for student veterans as opposed to other campuses, like St. Petersburg College.
“We didn’t have a veterans center,” she said. “(Milton) White was still working over in Financial Aid. Any time he heard about a veteran student, he would come out and help us with our benefits and stuff, and if he wasn’t there or he missed you, then you kind of got left behind.”
In 2015, she was hired as a mechanic for Campus Recreation. From there, she worked her way up to adventure programming, where she says she found her calling.
“I’m hooked, that’s what I want to do forever,” she said.
She took a year off to work in Wisconsin, where she learned rock climbing and other recreational activities not supported by Florida’s terrain.
By the time Mollo returned from Wisconsin, Milton White had founded the Military and Veterans Success Center. The Student Veterans Organization was in its inaugural year, and Mollo joined the e-board in the spring.
Although she acknowledges that societal support of veterans needs improvement, she said she is proud of the advancements to support them on campus.
“It’s cool to see how far we’ve evolved and how much better we’re doing for veterans on our campus and even dependents of veterans,” she said.
In spring 2018, she earned her bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary social sciences with concentrations in psychology and environmental science.
“I knew I needed to get an education to make it now,” she said. “It was either work some mediocre job once I got out, or go to school so I can better my options.”
Although she graduated, she says her bosses at Campus Rec have allowed her to stay until she starts her next job, which will be in the morale and recreation department of the Army. Working as a civilian in Hawaii, Mollo will plan trips for service members, veterans and their families.
“I really like helping soldiers or veterans through alternative things like hiking and backpacking for their PTSD and injuries versus medication,” she said.
For Mollo, one of the most frustrating parts of the adjustment back to civilian life was when others lacked the discipline to arrive on time or be responsible.
“It’s hard to figure out how to get people to do that without being as strict or mean as people in the military and not letting it personally get to you,” she said. “They’re just the same kids we were in the military early on, but in school.”
Although she described boot camp as “kind of a blur,” Mollo said it introduced her to one of her best friends, who also got stationed at South Padre Island.
“It’s cool because I made a lot of lifelong friends and they’re all throughout the country, so you always have a place to stay for vacation,” she laughed.
Mollo said joining the military helped her manage stressful situations and put her emotions aside to get things done.
“It made me grow up really quick because I was so young going in,” she said. “It definitely matured me quick.”
Photo courtesy of Stacy Pearsall (resized for web)
