Oral History Interview with Adria Zuccaro

[Interview Begins]

SPRAGUE: Today is June 23rd, 2023. This is an interview with Adria Zuccaro, who served in the United States Air National Guard from 1995 to present. This interview has been conducted by Luke Sprague at the General Mitchell Air National Guard Base in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For the I am not Invisible project for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. No one else is present in the room. OC Col. Where did you grow up?

ZUCCARO: I grew up in Northern Virginia. Fairfax station.

ZUCCARO: Is about 20 miles outside of Washington.

ZUCCARO: D.C..

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what did your family do there?

ZUCCARO: My father was a United Airlines pilot and my mother was a homemaker.

ZUCCARO: And two older siblings. And I was born and raised through high.

ZUCCARO: School in that area.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what schools did you attend there?

ZUCCARO: I went to Burke Elementary School and Lake Braddock High School.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So what what initially got you thinking about joining the military?

ZUCCARO: It began more so with what got me thinking.

ZUCCARO: About.

ZUCCARO: Flying. So I started working.

ZUCCARO: Various jobs for neighbors and such. At about ten years old and and did that all through middle school and high school.

ZUCCARO: So I saved my money. And when I was 14 years old, I asked my father if he'd take me to the airport so I.

ZUCCARO: Could jump out of an airplane. I wanted to skydive.

SPRAGUE: When you were how old?

ZUCCARO: 14.

SPRAGUE: 14. Oh, my God.

ZUCCARO: So I said he went to take me to the airport. A, I knew how much skydiving costs and I'd have enough money.

ZUCCARO: And I'd like to do that. And he responded with the let's let's.

ZUCCARO: Split the cost of flying.

ZUCCARO: Lessons. And you don't jump out of an airplane until after college.

ZUCCARO: And I thought about it and I said, well, that's a pretty good deal. So I took that deal and started flying lessons.

SPRAGUE: What aircraft did you learn on.

ZUCCARO: A Cessna 152?

ZUCCARO: I'm a typical trainer out at Manassas Airport.

ZUCCARO: That's just in.

ZUCCARO: Northern Virginia as well.

ZUCCARO: Which is a pretty busy area to learn to fly.

ZUCCARO: In because you have Dulles and National and.

ZUCCARO: Baltimore airspace and Richmond.

ZUCCARO: Airspace. So. But it was.

ZUCCARO: Manassas where I initially did my flight training. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Were you at that point you were just thinking about flying?

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Yeah. So my father was a prior military.

ZUCCARO: He was a Navy F-8 pilot on carriers. And so.

ZUCCARO: I was exposed to military for sure.

ZUCCARO: Through him.

ZUCCARO: And then as I got through high school, I must've.

ZUCCARO: Started thinking about it. Or maybe my father did.

ZUCCARO: Because he took me to the West Virginia Air National Guard unit.

ZUCCARO: And I actually walked around there and got a tour when I was probably a junior senior in high school, and that's where I actually learned about.

ZUCCARO: The Guard program. So he he helped me discover different avenues in the military besides active duty.

SPRAGUE: What was your father's name for the record?

ZUCCARO: Fred As a page.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did you have any other relatives or siblings or parents that served in the military?

ZUCCARO: So, yes. So my grandfather.

ZUCCARO: Served in the Korean War and my other grandfather was a little bit too old for World War Two.

ZUCCARO: But he was a maintenance supervisor.

ZUCCARO: At United.

ZUCCARO: Airlines at the time.

ZUCCARO: And the military actually brought him in as a civilian with a couple other airline executives. And he.

ZUCCARO: Served.

ZUCCARO: In the military as a civilian and doing various set ups in the Pacific.

SPRAGUE: Huh. So it sounds like you have quite a history or lineage of of service.

ZUCCARO: Certainly exposed to it. Yes. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So what one did and this is kind of a question, what at what point did you get your pilot's license? Your first pilot's license?

ZUCCARO: So I started flying when I was 14.

ZUCCARO: And I went through solo and got pretty close to getting my license. But then I went off to college and.

ZUCCARO: Right. Right when I should have come home and.

ZUCCARO: And finished off that license, I didn't.

ZUCCARO: So actually, it was when I.

ZUCCARO: Got selected for pilot training and finished pilot training was officially the first.

ZUCCARO: License.

ZUCCARO: And then I went back and added on the single.

ZUCCARO: Engine add on. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Did you find that that earlier training and experience helped you later in your your pilot training?

ZUCCARO: Lutely. Yeah, because there's a lot of people who.

ZUCCARO: Think they're going to like.

ZUCCARO: Flying, but you really have to go out and do it to see if it's what you.

ZUCCARO: Really thought it was going to be. So certainly that that early.

ZUCCARO: Experience and then soloing and going through the.

ZUCCARO: Cross-country and the solo cross-country.

ZUCCARO: Is and really knowing.

ZUCCARO: That, yes. That I being in an aircraft.

ZUCCARO: Is where I want to be.

SPRAGUE: So you decided not to be a parachutist, but instead to be a pilot?

ZUCCARO: That's right. And I still haven't skydive all these years.

SPRAGUE: Oh, static line. No halo.

ZUCCARO: Maybe I've done bungee cord jumping and ins and stuff.

ZUCCARO: And at this point it sounds silly, but I don't want to wreck my knees. So I think I'll wing walk. That's my new. That's my new thing.

SPRAGUE: So tell me a little bit about going to college and where you went to college.

ZUCCARO: So I grew up in Northern Virginia.

ZUCCARO: I was a typical teenager who just wanted to get out.

ZUCCARO: And see the world.

ZUCCARO: And so I tried to go as far away from home as I could.

ZUCCARO: Because it was a bit of a pill. As a teenager and as far away from home as I could get.

ZUCCARO: Was in Arizona. So I went to the University of Arizona and they had the degree that I was interested in at the time, which was human resource, but through the business department. So business degree.

ZUCCARO: Focusing on that. So and I love Tucson, but Tucson got really, really hot in the summer surprise. And so in the.

ZUCCARO: Summertime, I went and worked at Yellowstone National Park. So I went up to Denali and spent two summers working in Denali National Park.

SPRAGUE: So a little bit of time with the National Park Service maybe, or the concessionaires.

ZUCCARO: I was waiting tables.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

ZUCCARO: Every park has a concessionaire.

SPRAGUE: Of course. So tell me how you got from graduating with the human resources management to becoming a part or getting to getting into the military?

ZUCCARO: So, like I said, I graduated from the University of Arizona. I spent one more summer.

ZUCCARO: At Denali National Park. And I thought to myself, well.

ZUCCARO: Before I go off and.

ZUCCARO: Do the real adulting work, I want to spend just one more where I want to spend a winter in.

ZUCCARO: Alaska because it's different in the summertime.

ZUCCARO: Than the wintertime.

ZUCCARO: Obviously. So I my intention was to stay one winter in Fairbanks and then come.

ZUCCARO: Back and get a real job and go on from there.

ZUCCARO: So I did spend.

ZUCCARO: That winter in Fairbanks.

ZUCCARO: Alaska, and I was waiting tables.

ZUCCARO: At a.

ZUCCARO: At the country western bar. And one of my very first customers was.

ZUCCARO: A guard pilot with the 168. And I started talking to him and.

ZUCCARO: He's like, Well, wait a second. You're, you know, you're almost finished up on your private pilot's license. You have a college education.

ZUCCARO: You don't have an arrest record. And you, like Alaska.

ZUCCARO: Usually come apply.

ZUCCARO: To our pilot position.

ZUCCARO: And I was like, yeah, I know. I know about the guard a little bit. You know, my dad had walked me around the West Virginia.

ZUCCARO: Guard unit and.

ZUCCARO: And I, I'd done a year rozee of.

ZUCCARO: At university Arizona too.

ZUCCARO: And, and so I knew I didn't want to be in the active duty, but I had kind of forgotten about the guard program. And so he said, yeah, you should. It would be very competitive for position. So I put my application in with 168 air refueling wing at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. And that process.

ZUCCARO: Took it.

ZUCCARO: Took quite a while. So in the meantime, I went from waiting tables to investing in a local cheesesteak restaurant and and working as a part owner in the Cheesesteak restaurant. In the meantime, I did get selected for the pilot position as an alternate.

ZUCCARO: And so I really didn't know the timeline of when that or if that would come to fruition. So I got the restaurant.

ZUCCARO: Going.

ZUCCARO: In and waiting to hear back from that. And in the meantime, they had somebody fall out. So I got a primary slot, but that took a couple years from the time that I interviewed to the time where they.

ZUCCARO: Actually sent me off to training. So I worked for the restaurant and that cost us about as much as a master's degree, took about as long as master's degree. And I learned far more.

ZUCCARO: Than any master's degree could ever teach you.

ZUCCARO: About small business in restaurant businesses.

SPRAGUE: Oh, if you don't mind sharing, Where was that restaurant?

ZUCCARO: Fairbanks. Fairbanks. Right. Downtown Fairbanks.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And we had the best cheesesteaks anywhere we had at the peak. We had three different locations.

ZUCCARO: We had over 100 employees. We grossed a million in our first year, not netted, but we did. Gross And and really it was with two brothers and one brother. And I had the vision to franchise.

ZUCCARO: Because there really isn't a good cheesesteak still franchise out there. And the other brother.

ZUCCARO: Wanted a mom and pop restaurant.

ZUCCARO: And really.

ZUCCARO: We couldn't reconcile the two different visions.

ZUCCARO: But it was a fantastic experience. We had food delivery service.

ZUCCARO: To the army.

ZUCCARO: Base, which was right.

ZUCCARO: There, and.

ZUCCARO: I really enjoyed it. It was a hard, hard work.

SPRAGUE: And what was the name of the restaurant.

ZUCCARO: Or The.

ZUCCARO: Chuckwagon?

SPRAGUE: The Chuckwagon. Thanks.

ZUCCARO: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. And you were part owner or one of the owners. Okay.

ZUCCARO: 2021 was young, and at one point I was the youngest employee as an owner.

SPRAGUE: Wow. Okay, so the Air Force picks you up or to.

ZUCCARO: Alaska.

SPRAGUE: Airlines. Alaska Air National Guard. Sorry. Tell me about, you know, getting into the military, how that process worked for you.

ZUCCARO: It it's a bureaucracy.

ZUCCARO: And it's hard. And, you know, at one point they needed to do my security clearance. And I had done my security clearance paperwork, which at.

ZUCCARO: That time was actually paperwork and filled it.

ZUCCARO: Out. And I sat on some of these desks. And in the meantime, they'd switched to a computer program.

ZUCCARO: And so.

ZUCCARO: I mean, this is like ten, 11 months that goes by and I'm like, you know, what's going on?

ZUCCARO: And finally, somebody.

ZUCCARO: Found the paperwork that was sitting on somebodies desk, and they're like, you need to redo your security clearance.

ZUCCARO: Paperwork, which is really difficult. I mean, it's really difficult. So if you can imagine at that point.

ZUCCARO: Actually, I had gone and stayed with my parents for about a month who were living in Hawaii.

ZUCCARO: So I went to the Hawaiian National Guard and said, Do you have these computers where I can enter my.

ZUCCARO: My security clearance information?

ZUCCARO: So the Hawaiian guard was really good to me.

ZUCCARO: And and I sat down and get that paperwork reentered. But, you know.

ZUCCARO: Those type of things take months.

ZUCCARO: I mean, that was probably a ten month delay there.

ZUCCARO: So in the meantime.

ZUCCARO: You know, I'd had the restaurant and.

ZUCCARO: Even at the very.

ZUCCARO: End of it and we had declared the bankruptcy or it I had actually gotten.

ZUCCARO: Out of that.

ZUCCARO: The business before they did that. And I was back bartending and waiting tables. And the guy came out to do my security clearance, the investigator.

ZUCCARO: And at that time, the bars could be open 22.

ZUCCARO: Hours.

ZUCCARO: A day. You could pick any two.

ZUCCARO: Hours to close. And in this bar closed from 8 to 10 in the morning. So I.

ZUCCARO: Would work the eight at nine shift to the five A.

ZUCCARO: Hit all the shift workers after work.

ZUCCARO: And I told the investigator, hey, I don't get off work till 5 a.m.. Let's do this interview in the afternoon. He chose not.

ZUCCARO: To. He showed up at about 10:00 in the morning.

ZUCCARO: And that and I did my my.

ZUCCARO: Interview with him.

ZUCCARO: And that was that security clearance.

ZUCCARO: My point being is a lengthy, lengthy process.

ZUCCARO: But that finally all made it through the wickets. And and I eventually got hired and got to go to training.

SPRAGUE: And tell me about your your first, you know, arrival in uniform, your reporting for duty or for training. Where was that at?

ZUCCARO: So it because it was a pilot position.

ZUCCARO: Before they commissioned you in the Guard, at least at that time, they would send you to a.

ZUCCARO: Pre screening course. And so in December of must have been 96 maybe I went to Hondo, which is in Texas outside.

ZUCCARO: Of Lackland and did the screening.

ZUCCARO: Funny thing there is your.

ZUCCARO: I didn't have any military experience whatsoever. I'm a straight civilian.

ZUCCARO: So they issue me a flight suit in an officer's hat with no rank. And they said, go to this prescreening course. And so now that I'm in the military, I understand, you know, the systems and the.

ZUCCARO: Orders and the, you know, all of that. But at that time, I had no idea what that was. And so just trying to work through and actually get tickets and how do I report and what do I do?

ZUCCARO: And anyways, I make my way.

ZUCCARO: Down to Hondo and Lackland is where we stayed and got in with the other people in prescreening who most of them had some sort of military.

ZUCCARO: Experience and that was very helpful. But I didn't have any customs or courtesies. I didn't have any way to know how to get paid any of any of those things. So. And really it's pretty high pressure because you got to make it through.

ZUCCARO: This freeze screen. They're trying to see if you get airsick. They're trying to see if you have a fear of flying. They're trying to see if you have half a head on your shoulders. So, you know, you're really trying to make it through the flying portion.

ZUCCARO: But I did but it was it was difficult.

ZUCCARO: Not having any prior experience.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. Hondo is is spelled how to Indio.

ZUCCARO: Hondo.

SPRAGUE: Okay. It was at Hondo Airfield or Hondo.

ZUCCARO: It's a little airfield.

SPRAGUE: Okay. No problem. Yeah, It.

ZUCCARO: Is now a military base.

ZUCCARO: It was a ox field that they used, so we would bus about 45 minutes from Lackland to Hondo, and then we bus back at the end of the day.

SPRAGUE: It also seems it's interesting to me. So you were not in the guard at that point, but you're not a cadet. But you're not enlisted, but you're not an officer?

ZUCCARO: No, I had a I had an I.D. that said.

ZUCCARO: I was a.

ZUCCARO: E-5. Oh.

ZUCCARO: Even though I had no you know, that was just the entry level petty officer. And in a way, you go.

ZUCCARO: So your commissioning was.

ZUCCARO: Predicated on you getting through this screening. So had I not made it through the screening, I would have been escorted.

ZUCCARO: Not escorted, but.

ZUCCARO: That would have been the end of my military pilot career. Now, would they have kept me in in a non-playing position?

ZUCCARO: I'd have to apply and and go from there, but probably.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Anything you remember from Lackland that sticks out in your head? Bad experiences, fun experiences.

ZUCCARO: Just being really nervous about.

ZUCCARO: Whether to salute or not. And Lachlan has a lot of foreign military there going to different various schools and such.

ZUCCARO: So just being so confused on am I supposed to salute somebody? Am I not supposed to salute somebody?

ZUCCARO: And, and.

ZUCCARO: And just really everything from this is pretty mobile.

ZUCCARO: Phones, right?

ZUCCARO: So what's a DSN line? What do you mean? I can. Long distance calls to Alaska costs money. And so working with.

ZUCCARO: The other prior military, who knew? Hey, if you call on the DSN line to the operator, they will connect.

ZUCCARO: I'm like, What? That's a thing. Yeah. And so all those little things.

ZUCCARO: Now that they don't even think twice about back then, it was all new.

ZUCCARO: Discovery and we were flying the T three at that time and the T three was a perfectly good airplane.

ZUCCARO: But then the military, in my opinion.

ZUCCARO: They put a much.

ZUCCARO: Bigger engine into it. And that caused some problems. It caused some hydraulic problems, hydraulic fluid lock up in that engine when CS And they.

ZUCCARO: Had problems.

ZUCCARO: At the academy particularly, and they unfortunately had a couple of.

ZUCCARO: Deaths. So the program.

ZUCCARO: You know, when I came into the program, they were allowing us to solo. And then as we were in the program, I think there were even some casualties during that time frame. And so it was always changing. And then you're like, well, wait a second, is this airplane safe? Is it not? They're having problems with the brakes because it was overpowered. It would burn through the brakes so they wouldn't let you solo.

ZUCCARO: I think that was the reason. And so in that regard.

ZUCCARO: It was a little bit difficult to know, okay, are we even going to make it through with or are they going to ground the airplane?

ZUCCARO: So that was one concern. But it was a fantastic program because that airplane.

ZUCCARO: Could do all the aerobatics. So it was an introduction into the full complement of aero, which I don't think they get in the prescreening program now. They certainly didn't get in the following.

ZUCCARO: Pre screening program. So going into pilot training, you already had at.

ZUCCARO: Least a small sense of what it was like to be upside down and had apology and those type.

ZUCCARO: Of things. So I was very grateful to have gotten to do it.

SPRAGUE: Tell me a little bit about you get through screening. And then to me, it looked like you went to go get your commission. Yes. Tell me a little bit about that program. Yes.

ZUCCARO: So they put you through the pre screening.

ZUCCARO: And then they send you to get commission.

ZUCCARO: And that was AMS.

ZUCCARO: So the Guard at that time used AMS as a commissioning source.

ZUCCARO: Which AMS. It was really different.

ZUCCARO: Designed to take somebody.

ZUCCARO: Who is an enlisted top performer.

ZUCCARO: And then convert them into, commission them into an officer and then return them typically back into the same office area that they came out of.

ZUCCARO: So there was a lot of focus.

ZUCCARO: On, you know, what's the difference between enlisted and officer. How are you going to handle going back now in this new officer role?

ZUCCARO: It was not a great program to make a.

ZUCCARO: Civilian into an officer.

ZUCCARO: So for the second time I show up at that AMS and I think I.

ZUCCARO: Was like one of two.

ZUCCARO: Civilians, one of 2 or 3 civilians out of the whole thing. So everybody else knows how to wear the uniform. They know all the customs and courtesies. They know how to take a military test. They know what a foot stamp is, you know, all these nuanced military things there, because they're the cream of the crop. You know, they're the high performing staff sergeants, a master sergeants for the most part. So that was interesting.

ZUCCARO: That was a steep learning curve. And I was rooming with a lady.

ZUCCARO: Who was as old as you.

ZUCCARO: Could possibly be and be commissioned. Like if she'd gone to another commissioning a week later, she.

ZUCCARO: Wouldn't have gotten commissioned.

ZUCCARO: And she.

ZUCCARO: Was.

ZUCCARO: Highly intelligent. She worked on like the Air Force's only boat as an Intel officer analyst of some sort.

ZUCCARO: And and she really helped me with uniforms.

ZUCCARO: And some of that little stuff.

ZUCCARO: But it was a good.

ZUCCARO: Compliment because where she got stuck was she would overthink all these tests. I mean, these are not scholarly tests.

ZUCCARO: They're they're trying to give us.

ZUCCARO: And that and she would just overthink all of them and dicker about the answers.

ZUCCARO: And I was like, listen, if I know one thing, I'm a B student. I, I know how to get through a test. So just don't don't argue. Just they told you what? The answer was in class when they stomped that foot. Write that one down. So it was a good experience.

SPRAGUE: And that was at a Tennessee. Mm hmm. Maybe twice the National Guard.

ZUCCARO: McGee. Tyson.

SPRAGUE: Tyson. Sure. Yeah.

ZUCCARO: I did get really sick.

ZUCCARO: In the middle of it. And you don't want to.

ZUCCARO: You don't want to.

ZUCCARO: Miss any of it. And I. I had a fever and an earache, and I kept falling asleep in lectures, and they.

ZUCCARO: Pulled me out, and they were like, You're going to get kicked out if you can't stay awake. And I was like, I think I need to go to the clinic. And I went to the clinic and they were like, oh, my word, yes, you're you're you're really sick. And so I got.

ZUCCARO: Some medications, but I remember being worried to say anything and then being worried that that they wouldn't let me complete the course and wash my back. And so I took my antibiotics and went out in the field.

ZUCCARO: Did the field exercise and made it out of there.

SPRAGUE: Good. Good. So you get commissioned. Mm hmm. Where did you go to next?

ZUCCARO: So let's see.

ZUCCARO: Right before I got commissioned, I actually got married.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And I went to arms for the honeymoon. My husband went to.

ZUCCARO: Italy for that portion of it, which was fortunate for him. So after that, I went back up to Alaska.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And waited to go.

ZUCCARO: To pilot training. But while I was waiting to go to pilot training.

ZUCCARO: My husband got reassigned to Tucson.

ZUCCARO: Ironically back to Tucson, because he was an A-10 pilot.

ZUCCARO: So that's where there are two U is.

ZUCCARO: So we moved.

ZUCCARO: Out of Alaska to Tucson. He set up a household in Tucson. And then pretty shortly after that, I went on to.

ZUCCARO: Columbus, Mississippi. So I went to pilot training in Columbus, Mississippi.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. And what was that? What was that like as a student pilot?

ZUCCARO: So my my mother is from Mississippi and my grandfather was still alive and he lived in Mississippi. And my mother had actually gone to MSW, Mississippi State College for Women, which is now the new.

ZUCCARO: Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, Mississippi. So it was it was kind of neat to have some ties there. And my grandfather.

ZUCCARO: Had always said.

ZUCCARO: He goes, there's always airplanes, this air force airplanes.

ZUCCARO: Flying over my farm.

ZUCCARO: Like, yeah, whatever, whatever. And later on in the training, we were doing low level routes and one.

ZUCCARO: Of the low level routes, the the dam right by the farm was what you were bombing. And the turn in point that you lined up to do that was my grandfather's barn.

ZUCCARO: So he was right that the Air Force planes always flew over his barn. So the whole time I was at Columbus, Mississippi, every.

ZUCCARO: Time you saw an airplane is that I.

ZUCCARO: Saw you flying today, didn't you, now? So I enjoyed.

ZUCCARO: Being in Columbus, and I really did.

SPRAGUE: And that was with the 14 flying training wing, right? Maybe.

ZUCCARO: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What type of planes did you train on?

ZUCCARO: I was still in the T 37 era.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: But I did not get to fly the T 38 because I knew that I was going back to the KC 135 They had brought on T ones and they had been there a little bit. So I flew the T 3721.

SPRAGUE: Stupid question. So you were in the air. You were out of the Alaska National Guard, The 168. Mm hmm. Did you. Did you acquire the association with the KC 135 At that point or.

ZUCCARO: So when you joined a guard unit.

ZUCCARO: You joined that unit.

ZUCCARO: So I knew going.

ZUCCARO: Into pilot training that I would come back.

ZUCCARO: To the KC 135. Whereas if you.

ZUCCARO: Were in active duty, you go to pilot training and then depending on how you rank in your pilot training class determines.

ZUCCARO: What aircraft you go to.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Which is really nice.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So anything you remember from that training that you're embarrassed by or sticks out in your head?

ZUCCARO: Oh, we.

ZUCCARO: Could be there all day.

SPRAGUE: Oh, the. The highlight, the highlights.

ZUCCARO: It was difficult. And yeah.

ZUCCARO: It was absolutely difficult. I learned some real lessons there, which I try and carry forward about.

ZUCCARO: Probably the biggest.

ZUCCARO: Takeaway is different learning styles. And so. As I look back on my training and where things kind of went awry, which they did.

ZUCCARO: For a while. And I noticed that particularly for women, we talk a lot.

ZUCCARO: We talk a lot more than men. And the men do. It's just a fact. And we ask a.

ZUCCARO: Lot more questions than men do.

ZUCCARO: And when you do that at that time, in that environment, it is perceived as you don't know what you're doing and you're unsure.

ZUCCARO: And you're not confident. And once you head down that pathway.

ZUCCARO: It's very difficult. It's difficult for you.

ZUCCARO: To not perceive yourself.

ZUCCARO: As maybe I'm not getting this, and it's difficult for.

ZUCCARO: Others around you. So I was fortunate. I kept at.

ZUCCARO: It. I, I had difficulties in the 30 sevens with a couple of check rides.

ZUCCARO: And what helped me more.

ZUCCARO: Than anything was getting out of the T.

ZUCCARO: 37 and into the T one because in the T one you fly.

ZUCCARO: With your other classmates. And so I was I must not be a very good pilot. And I feel like I'm making all these mistakes. And I was really down coming out of t 37 and I got the T one.

ZUCCARO: I started flying with my peers and I'm like, Oh, I'm just as good as they are. Like, I got this as good as they do. You know, none of us are perfect. And that really was.

ZUCCARO: A turning point for me to say, okay, I'm on par. I'm I'm not portraying what I need to portray, which is the confidence to to make sure that other.

ZUCCARO: People are confident in me. And I really had to change.

ZUCCARO: How I studied and ask questions and who I.

ZUCCARO: Ask questions of, what I take away at this point in my career. And I try really, really hard.

ZUCCARO: To.

ZUCCARO: Get other people to.

ZUCCARO: Consider is learning.

ZUCCARO: Styles. Like it's because somebody is asking questions does not necessarily mean.

ZUCCARO: They don't know. It just means that they want to be clear before they step to the jet. And I think women, much more so as a whole want to be knowing what's going on, when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen before.

ZUCCARO: They get in the aircraft.

ZUCCARO: And men are a little more apt to just step in.

ZUCCARO: And make it up as they go. And neither one is right or.

ZUCCARO: Wrong, but I try really hard with people to say look at their learning style. Are they learning verbally? Can they go home and just read a regulation and then come back and know what they doing? Or do they need to talk through it?

ZUCCARO: And and when they talk through it, you know, are they are they getting the key points? And so I would say that my biggest takeaway from pilot training was that.

SPRAGUE: You find their words while you were training. And at that time, was there any blatant gender discrimination or as you as a woman coming into or not?

ZUCCARO: I, I don't think so. I you know, in it's been, you know, I was.

ZUCCARO: Kind of right on the edge where women were finally starting to come into the flying career a little bit more.

ZUCCARO: So it was set up definitely for men.

ZUCCARO: And my generation of women just kind of put our nose down and tried to make it through that system. We weren't trying hard to change that system or even recognize how could it be better? We were just trying to make it through under the under those existing rules. And kind of the story I just relayed was, okay, I'm not I'm not going to ask my.

ZUCCARO: Flight instructor questions because he's going to.

ZUCCARO: Perceive that as a lack of confidence. I'm going to ask my trusted friend or I'm going to go outside of the pilot training and try and figure it out. But I am, I learned, do not go in there and ask them questions.

ZUCCARO: Which is too bad, right? Because what's an instructor there for?

SPRAGUE: Exactly.

ZUCCARO: So in that regard, did I encounter any blatant.

ZUCCARO: And I wouldn't say blatant.

ZUCCARO: And there there are always episodes.

ZUCCARO: You know, and usually that's a certain person.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Yeah. That's how that's how I describe it.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. So tell me about becoming qualified later on. Next at the on the KC 135.

ZUCCARO: Okay. Oh, well, one thing.

SPRAGUE: I.

ZUCCARO: Know now for the pilot training, I did go through with my maiden name.

ZUCCARO: I did not change it because my husband was in the military.

ZUCCARO: As well.

ZUCCARO: And a little bit about ten years older than me.

ZUCCARO: So I knew there would be people.

ZUCCARO: There that knew him. So I.

ZUCCARO: Intentionally.

ZUCCARO: Went in with my maiden name so that I made sure that there was no favoritism one way or the other, which was pretty smart because actually one of the instructors I ended up having was.

ZUCCARO: Actually a good friend of his and he never.

ZUCCARO: Knew that I was his wife, which was great.

ZUCCARO: And then there was another person there. There's two two schools of thought.

ZUCCARO: So my husband either liked them or you didn't.

ZUCCARO: And there was that other further, there was like one of the commanders who didn't like that plan. I was I.

ZUCCARO: Was really happy to get out knowing that, you know, this was this was me doing this.

ZUCCARO: And whichever way it would have ended up and ended up going the way I wanted it to. But there was no there was never any influence from from him.

SPRAGUE: For the record. Would you be okay with mentioning your maiden name at that time? Yeah.

ZUCCARO: So like my aeronautical.

ZUCCARO: Order that's on the wall is Lieutenant Adrian Page.

SPRAGUE: Page? Page. Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Yeah. So I kept my maiden name for a while, but I was.

ZUCCARO: I was glad to do it. Yeah.

ZUCCARO: And so that might be one difference to.

ZUCCARO: I don't know any male that went to pilot training that was concerned about anybody.

ZUCCARO: Knowing his wife. So. But that was something I know.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Okay. So it looks like the next thing that happened is you went to get actually qualified for Casey. 135.

ZUCCARO: Yep. There was. There was a little break in there.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And it wasn't it wasn't.

ZUCCARO: Too long, but it it was enough to mess up the orders, which was aggravating.

ZUCCARO: Okay.

SPRAGUE: If you want to share that, that would be great. If not, that's all.

ZUCCARO: And I'm trying to remember, if I went to survival school, I.

ZUCCARO: Think I might have gone to.

ZUCCARO: Survival school after pilot training.

ZUCCARO: And then to 135.

SPRAGUE: School. Okay.

ZUCCARO: So honest to goodness, I can't remember.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So after pilot training, we had all.

ZUCCARO: The.

ZUCCARO: Families there.

ZUCCARO: We did the reenactment of the wedding. That never happened because we actually eloped.

ZUCCARO: So that is a lovely antebellum home. And we had all the families there and we did.

ZUCCARO: This really nice ceremony. And then I did I must have gone to Oklahoma from there. I think I went right to 135.

ZUCCARO: School, honestly, to Altus.

ZUCCARO: Oklahoma.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Which is not my favorite place in the nation.

SPRAGUE: Why is that?

ZUCCARO: Oh, it's just it's flat and windy. And then trash flies around because it's windy and the plastic bags get stuck in the trees and it's hard to get to. And it's it's got a real school flavor to it.

ZUCCARO: The military school. A little different than the other ones. I don't know.

ZUCCARO: I had a perfectly good.

ZUCCARO: Time there and I enjoyed learning the KC 135 and I was I am old enough to have come into the KC 135 before we had the upgrades to I.A. and got in jeeps and, and got rid of the navigator. So when I came in, KC 135 had a 4 or 5 person crew. You had AC copilot and navigator and a boom operator. And then if you're.

ZUCCARO: Traveling, you'd have traveling crew chiefs.

ZUCCARO: So I learned all the old school stuff. We had round dials, we had no glass. They were still shooting cell shots.

ZUCCARO: And so.

ZUCCARO: Your you had to learn how to work in a crew with a navigator who by definition.

ZUCCARO: Outranked you and in that.

ZUCCARO: Really added some components to it.

ZUCCARO: But so we're getting back.

ZUCCARO: To that, the Altus experience. So I learned how to do manual.

ZUCCARO: I was the last class to do manual takeoff data.

ZUCCARO: Which is a rite of passage. It's incredibly involved calculation that was done at the time all manually. And that I think that class, just to teach the takeoff data was two and a half or three days long.

ZUCCARO: So so it's one of the first real delineations between, oh.

ZUCCARO: Are you that, you know.

ZUCCARO: Manual.

ZUCCARO: Takeoff data generation? Are you you know.

ZUCCARO: You just plugged it into the box.

SPRAGUE: So that KC 135 was which model would suit.

ZUCCARO: I only flew.

ZUCCARO: The R.

SPRAGUE: Model to our model. Okay.

ZUCCARO: But at the time there were.

ZUCCARO: A lot of E models left that hadn't.

ZUCCARO: Been converted yet.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. And that was the new that was the new engine. That was a big deal to fly the R model.

SPRAGUE: Right? Right. So did you actually, you were just an R, You said that, but. So you didn't experience the engine upgrade or.

ZUCCARO: You know, I came in right out right after.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Okay. For the civilians listening, what is qualification? I mean.

ZUCCARO: It's just a it's a school that you have to.

ZUCCARO: Go through and then you get certified qualified after you.

ZUCCARO: Complete it.

ZUCCARO: So if you don't complete it, then you can't go on.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So you you graduate or what do they call it? You made your quals or qualification.

ZUCCARO: There's no great. And you got.

SPRAGUE: Called. You got called. Okay. I want to have the right for You were called.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. They may have.

ZUCCARO: Another technical term but that's that's how I remember it when I talk about guys going are and called it.

SPRAGUE: Cool.

ZUCCARO: It's probably slang but.

SPRAGUE: That's okay it's what you use as a vernacular. That's the important thing. So then you go back up to Alaska after Oklahoma.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. And then I must have gone. I think that's.

ZUCCARO: When they broke the orders. And then there must have been some time and I went to survival school.

SPRAGUE: And tell us about Survival School and where that is.

ZUCCARO: That's.

ZUCCARO: And that's at Fairchild in Washington State, right outside of Spokane. And it is designed there's a invasion piece. There's a you've been captured and now you're a P.O.W. and.

ZUCCARO: They teach you all the.

ZUCCARO: Ways that you can survive in the world. And different environments. So there's a.

ZUCCARO: Classroom portion to start with.

ZUCCARO: And then there is a field portion. And I loved it.

ZUCCARO: It was great. They teach all.

ZUCCARO: Sorts of skills. I went in March.

ZUCCARO: So it was snowy.

ZUCCARO: And that was the first time that I got to use snow shoes. I came back home and.

ZUCCARO: Bought snow shoes. I loved it so much. But we had at the time that.

ZUCCARO: A certain career field had not had to go through this course. But then the regulations change and they said everybody and their. Equipment, AFI, the survival.

ZUCCARO: Equipment career.

ZUCCARO: Field is now going to have to go.

ZUCCARO: So in my little unit, we had this really old guy.

ZUCCARO: Named Jerry Jerry from New Jersey, and he was about.

ZUCCARO: He was.

ZUCCARO: Going to retire like the next year. So he had to been 57, 56, 57 years old.

ZUCCARO: Chain smoker, Italian guy. And he showed up and he didn't know there was a field portion.

ZUCCARO: He thought it was just the classroom portion. And they said, no, no, you're going to go through the field portion. So he was not prepared at all.

ZUCCARO: And it's pretty rigorous.

ZUCCARO: When you're out.

ZUCCARO: Camping out and snowshoeing around here and all.

ZUCCARO: Your stuff.

ZUCCARO: The whole time you're up in the mountains. So I was the senior officer.

ZUCCARO: In my element. And so I was responsible for everybody. And they were really worried about.

ZUCCARO: Jerry because Jerry would fall over with his backpack and not be strong enough to get up and he'd have a pain in his right arm, check them for a heart attack and all this stuff. And so when it came to the evasion.

ZUCCARO: Portion.

ZUCCARO: Day where you're supposed to be, you know, hiding behind.

ZUCCARO: Trees and little crawling and doing all this stuff to evade the enemy.

ZUCCARO: The instructor said, All right, Lieutenant Page, you just get Jerry from point A to point B without having a heart attack. And we'll call you. Good on the evasion stuff. And so me and Jerry kind of snowshoe do arm in arm sort of through the mountains to get him to the other side where everybody else is, you know, doing this evasion stuff. So I.

ZUCCARO: Remember that.

ZUCCARO: But we got Jerry through the course and it was high stakes for for Jerry, because if he couldn't complete this course, he couldn't be in his career field. And he was so close to retirement, it was kind of ridiculous that they made him do it. But he did. So we all made it.

SPRAGUE: Oh, wow. So this was not called Sere school or something?

ZUCCARO: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: I've had people ask me about that. And survival escape, rescue evasion. Or do I have them?

ZUCCARO: Yeah, that sounds about right.

SPRAGUE: Okay. I'm just guessing.

ZUCCARO: But it really does teach you a.

ZUCCARO: Lot of different techniques. So in the resistance portion, I actually use that later on with a hospitalization with one of my children, because what they really impressed upon you is that their captors are going to hurt you. They're going to.

ZUCCARO: Physically.

ZUCCARO: Torture you. And the one thing that you have more control over than anything else is your mental capacity. So your goal is to come out of that captured situation with mentally surviving. And if you can't mentally stay optimistic and know that you're going to come out of it, you won't. And that was a huge lesson. As a young person, never really considered that you.

ZUCCARO: Don't contemplate your own demise when you're in your 20s or you don't you don't think through.

ZUCCARO: Even necessarily like I have control of what I think and how I think and what I do.

ZUCCARO: And so they really.

ZUCCARO: Taught you all the fundamental basics of how to resist and survive a bad.

ZUCCARO: Situation. And that was.

ZUCCARO: Very eye opening to me. And I and I was fortunate to have that training because I think it's really I've used it many, many ways in my in my civilian life. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So you get back to Alaska? Mm hmm. Tell me about. It would have probably been your. I'm looking at this. It would have been. You're up at the 1/60 air fueling squadron, and it looks like your first position there was as an aircraft commander or a copilot.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I came back as a copilot. Okay. And then took that. And now I was a part time Guardsman.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: What we call now a drill status Guardsmen.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Meaning that I was not fully employed by the military, but at that time, it was pre 911 and the Alaska Air National Guard still does to this. Sit an alert where the tankers sit on alert, the fighters sit on alert down in the Anchorage area and they respond to any time that the Russians would come over close to our 80s or penetrate the 80s. So it was a posture left over from the Cold War.

SPRAGUE: And for the civilians, what's in it is.

ZUCCARO: Oh, an area.

ZUCCARO: Defense to.

SPRAGUE: Something.

ZUCCARO: Something you know is 12 miles off the coast of of all sovereign nations.

ZUCCARO: It's that it's how far you get into that ocean with your sovereign nations airspace.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So so really.

ZUCCARO: That alert had been there since we Strategic Air Command during the Cold War to respond to any Russian activity. And that alert was still ongoing when I got there. So as a part timer, there were lots of orders and ways to get paid.

ZUCCARO: So I was what.

ZUCCARO: People affectionately call a guard bum.

ZUCCARO: Meaning I wasn't employed full time.

ZUCCARO: But I bombed enough orders that I could string together a a living.

ZUCCARO: Pause for a second because I got a okay.

SPRAGUE: Okay. This is a Colonel Zaccaro and Luke Sprague, and we're starting segment two of Colonel Zakaria's interview. And we had just finished talking about being on alert and Alaska and the Cold War implications of that. So one of the questions that I had regarding that was and this is pre 911, this is a 1999 ish.

ZUCCARO: Roughly 99. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What you had mentioned in your one of your pre interviews or a different interview, seeing a bear bomber, was that kind of during that time or maybe a little later, what was that like?

ZUCCARO: Yeah, so we were talking about that 160.

ZUCCARO: It's a sad alert since the Cold War. They still do even to this day. And the Russians will fly close to Alaska and we will interceptor. That's a pretty routine occurrence. You can read about it in that in the news after after they happen. And I was on a response where we got alerted and we scrambled and we made our timing and we met our.

ZUCCARO: Receiver fighter aircraft and were.

ZUCCARO: Way up at the at the top of Alaska. And one of the F-15s had had a problem. And so they they told the ground controller, hey, we're going to return to base.

ZUCCARO: Well, okay, so we have a F-15 and we can see the air bomber.

ZUCCARO: And really like three miles away.

ZUCCARO: And we're flying along. And pretty soon the boom operator goes, Hey, did the other fighter tell you he was leaving? And like, now? So the other fighter lives There now is just a tanker and a bareback bomber at the top of the world. And we're flying around and. All right. It's pretty cool. You know, we're looking at him a couple of miles away. And then the Baer bomber positions.

ZUCCARO: Itself between us and Homeland.

ZUCCARO: And I was like, edit my eye. And I was not see, as a copilot.

ZUCCARO: You know, that is like.

ZUCCARO: This is not good. So we told.

ZUCCARO: The controllers that, which is now an hour, we told an our Alaska North outrage and hey, we're going to head home. They're like, can't.

ZUCCARO: You just follow it for a little bit longer? And we're like, no, we're not going to follow the bomber.

ZUCCARO: How much longer you know where he is? We know where he is. We're headed.

ZUCCARO: Back. So we did.

SPRAGUE: So if I understand you correctly, that Russian bomber came between you and the United States. Did that make you nervous at all or.

ZUCCARO: Well, it went from, oh, this is really.

ZUCCARO: Cool to like, I don't like this.

ZUCCARO: No, not that that's threatening or it's just it's just a posturing.

ZUCCARO: But it did remind us like we are the tanker. Our role is to give gas to the fighters.

ZUCCARO: And the fighters have gone home, so we should probably go home. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What is it like you what was it like being on alert all the time in that guard unit?

ZUCCARO: So it was fun and.

ZUCCARO: Boring all at the same time.

ZUCCARO: Because you didn't launch.

ZUCCARO: Very often. I think I only launched an alert response maybe four times.

ZUCCARO: You know, in the 12 years I was up there. Now, I didn't set alert.

ZUCCARO: Later on when I got the full time job at the.

ZUCCARO: Beginning.

ZUCCARO: When.

ZUCCARO: I was a copilot, I sat alert frequently and I think they.

ZUCCARO: Would only allow you to sit like. Seven days in a row. Typically, you're going to sit 2 or 3 days in a row, so.

ZUCCARO: You're.

ZUCCARO: Literally in a modified living area, which for us, we're all converted offices. It was not a great facility, but it.

ZUCCARO: Had a kitchen and a day room.

ZUCCARO: And then individual rooms and you would.

ZUCCARO: Sit there waiting for the call and and and on the ready for days and days and days.

ZUCCARO: And you can imagine when you get young people.

ZUCCARO: Together, you get bored, you play games. We cooked a lot together.

ZUCCARO: We laughed a lot.

ZUCCARO: It was pre Internet.

ZUCCARO: And then there was Internet.

ZUCCARO: So that was just coming online. So that was a that was a big deal, but it was a great way.

ZUCCARO: To get to know your Squadmates.

ZUCCARO: Any time you go through.

ZUCCARO: Something hard or boring together, you know, you really get to know the other people.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What what was it like maintaining the aircraft even though you weren't necessarily exactly involved in it, but maintaining those aircraft in those conditions?

ZUCCARO: And it's.

ZUCCARO: Brutal. I really have such high respect for the crew chiefs that work up there because we only had maybe two hangars.

ZUCCARO: And there was a fuel cell hangar and a regular hangar. So they were doing a lot of work out on the line, out on the line at 30 below.

ZUCCARO: We would fly those aircraft till four till 40 below Fahrenheit.

ZUCCARO: Uh.

ZUCCARO: Celsius. Fahrenheit, sorry.

ZUCCARO: Which is very, very difficult conditions to be in. It's difficult on human beings and it's difficult mechanically. You get lots of line failures. Things get brittle, they break. We would have 60.

ZUCCARO: 60s.

ZUCCARO: For the engine to light off. So in a normal light off sequence here, you're going to light up probably ten, 15 seconds. Fuels go into the engine and then it sparks and you have your combustion. But you're sitting there and you know, the 36 minute or seconds, 57 seconds, 50, you know, kaboom.

ZUCCARO: So that whole time you're pumping fuel and, you know, these big light offs and big.

ZUCCARO: Smoke coming out of the tailpipe and it.

ZUCCARO: Is.

ZUCCARO: A different environment than even we.

ZUCCARO: See here called wise. So it does make a difference.

SPRAGUE: What would be something it while you were there, what is something that most people don't know about aerial refueling units that you constantly have to educate them about?

ZUCCARO: Just how many.

ZUCCARO: Operations are fuel dependent? In fact.

ZUCCARO: All operations are fuel dependent.

ZUCCARO: And so we would do the.

ZUCCARO: Coke Thunder exercises.

ZUCCARO: Which are now red flag exercises up there, and you'd have people come in from all over the world. It was an international and national level exercise. And the young fighter pilots would come in and.

ZUCCARO: They'd have these grand and.

ZUCCARO: We'd down.

ZUCCARO: You know, you've got X amount of tankers. Yeah, you're going to fly X amount of hours.

ZUCCARO: So you have X amount of gas.

ZUCCARO: To divvy up between all of you. Like that's all.

ZUCCARO: The gas that's going to be in there.

ZUCCARO: Make your plan with that planning factor. And every single day, every single year, they'd come back.

ZUCCARO: And their plan would be 4 or 5 times over the gas that's available.

ZUCCARO: And you'd say, okay, you can't do your plan. But I spent all day planning it, and I was like, Well, you didn't work off the assumption. So it's that constant. Trying to get.

ZUCCARO: People to believe that this really is all the gas that you have because they want to do all sorts of things and they're very, very limited without it.

SPRAGUE: So tell me, where were you on 911?

ZUCCARO: So I.

ZUCCARO: Was in.

ZUCCARO: Eglin Air Force Base in Florida with KC 135 crew, four miles. And we had flown down.

ZUCCARO: On routine training. We're going to spend the week in based out of England refueling AC one 30s out of Hurlburt. So we had come down, they do a lot of night flying. They've got really good whiskey areas which are practice areas out over the ocean. And so we had the night before refueled AC one 30s. We might have come back to the hotel and had a couple.

ZUCCARO: Of beers by the pool, might have gone to bed a little bit late because that's what you do when you're when you're out flying. And so in the morning.

ZUCCARO: The one of the boom operators was banging on the door and I'm like.

ZUCCARO: Sean, it's early. What are you doing? Like you were up. I know you're up. And and he's like, you need to come watch this.

ZUCCARO: And so we rallied as a crew and we watched the second aircraft hit the hit the buildings, and it really started to hit home.

ZUCCARO: And I was like, oh, this is.

ZUCCARO: This is really bad. And so I called my parents and I and they weren't down there at the gym at all. My sister. And I said, You got to call the gym and and get everybody home and do like we do for hurricanes or big storms. I don't know if power is going to go out. I don't know what the food's going to be like, you know, and.

ZUCCARO: Do your for your hurricane prep and pay attention to what's going on.

ZUCCARO: Fill up the car with gas, you know, all that stuff. My husband was in Alaska. He was out in the field moose hunting. So there was no way to get in contact. And I don't think we.

ZUCCARO: Had cell phones back then either. I know we didn't so.

ZUCCARO: Didn't get in contact with him. And then we as a crew, we just watched the rest of the day unfold and then tried to assimilate, you know, what does this mean to call back home and, you know, just get ready?

ZUCCARO: And so I don't know if it was I think it.

ZUCCARO: Was the next day we drove on to England to try and get, hey, where where do you want us to go? What do you want us to do? And how could you know? How do you participate? You want to you want to participate.

ZUCCARO: Where we needed.

ZUCCARO: And it was the first time I ever had an airman am a gun at me. And they had that front gate so locked down, you know, very restrictive with who was coming in. And and I just remember the distinct difference between going through the gate the day before and going through the gate the next day and how fortified, you know, it was.

ZUCCARO: So we did not fly.

ZUCCARO: Home on that 12th. And we.

ZUCCARO: I think we probably flew home on the 13th or the 14th and we got there was.

ZUCCARO: Nobody flying was like us and that airplane. And I think we got cleared somewhere from Florida all the way up to Canada, you know, which would never happen. And then again, because there is just no very little.

ZUCCARO: Air traffic in the Nassau in the national airspace flying at that time. So then it got back.

ZUCCARO: To home unit and it was, you know, we all came on to base and we're all waiting, you know, where do we fit in? Where do we fit in?

ZUCCARO: And it took a few weeks.

ZUCCARO: Before they actually tasked us to go to the Pacific, to Hawaii, and specifically, and we took a bunch of airplanes and a bunch of air crew maintainers, and we deployed to Hickam and and did.

ZUCCARO: Operations out of there. And for me, I was supposed to go to AC.

ZUCCARO: Upgrade and be in a training program, but we all went to Hawaii instead.

ZUCCARO: So instead, typically when you are ready to upgrade to.

ZUCCARO: Aircraft commander, there's a whole series of training that you're going to get at home station before you go. And none of that happened.

ZUCCARO: I flew one time with the Hawaiian Guard before I went to AC upgrade training. And it was the.

ZUCCARO: First time I had ever sat in the left seat. Because you're supposed to be comfortable in the left seat before you go.

ZUCCARO: And so I'm flying now with my home unit in the left seat, and they had their wing commander.

ZUCCARO: On that day who was a.

ZUCCARO: General. So I'm, as you know, young captain nervous.

ZUCCARO: Anyways, I had this general. It was.

ZUCCARO: Nice. This could be he was my instructor and I get my and a not at my home airfield and Hickam is Honolulu's airport you know so it was not a it is a busy international airport and so I flew my one training preparatory ride for AC upgrade.

ZUCCARO: Out of out of Hawaii and left to go to back to Altus, Oklahoma. I, I maybe even from there, maybe they flew me home and then I went back. But it, it was not long after spending a month in Hawaii that I went to.

ZUCCARO: Altus.

ZUCCARO: And they went.

ZUCCARO: Through AC upgrade.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What first of all your operation out of out of Hawaii, did it have an operational name?

ZUCCARO: I don't think so.

ZUCCARO: It was just the 911 response.

SPRAGUE: It wasn't Operation Noble Eagle maybe or not now.

ZUCCARO: Because noble Eagles.

ZUCCARO: 3310 that.

ZUCCARO: Well, you know what? It could have been it because the only X word would.

ZUCCARO: Have been established in response to 911 under the 3310 parent.

ZUCCARO: Operational plan. So it probably you know what? You're probably right.

ZUCCARO: I never really thought about it.

ZUCCARO: And it probably was.

SPRAGUE: No worries. And without telling me anything operationally important, what is the 3310 plan or.

ZUCCARO: It's a it's a war plan.

ZUCCARO: That Nora and NorthCom. Have to protect homeland defense. And out of that 3310 execution order that came from 911 is Operation Noble Eagle. Okay. And and that still stands today. So that.

ZUCCARO: Alert mission said that was.

ZUCCARO: Leftover from the Cold War has now converted to to noble eagle and endures not only there but in other.

ZUCCARO: Locations.

SPRAGUE: Right. So your next the other curiosity that I have so the listeners understand. Tell us a little bit about what an AC is and AC upgrade versus being in the right seat versus being in the left seat. Yep.

ZUCCARO: So when I came in, there were very distinct positions.

ZUCCARO: And the Navigator Navigator had very distinct roles. That copilot.

ZUCCARO: Sat in the right seat and.

ZUCCARO: The joke was all they did was lower and raised here.

ZUCCARO: And then the aircraft.

ZUCCARO: Commander was left seat and it was very traditional and formalized. And throughout my career, they really worked on the crew concept and being able to go back and forth and take input through the safety channels.

ZUCCARO: They determined.

ZUCCARO: That having a more of a crew.

ZUCCARO: Atmosphere is is safer.

ZUCCARO: But at that.

ZUCCARO: Time, you only came in.

ZUCCARO: To the right seat and then you upgraded from copilot to aircraft commander.

ZUCCARO: Nowadays, they'll train you in both seats. It's it's a little bit different. We still.

ZUCCARO: Have those distinctive positions and roles but they've.

ZUCCARO: They've progressed them. So and we still definitely send our copilots.

ZUCCARO: To aircraft commander upgrade. So you're taking somebody who can operate the airplane and now your. Your training them how to be.

ZUCCARO: Responsible for the operations because your aircraft.

ZUCCARO: Commander is the one who's responsible for the mission.

ZUCCARO: They're responsible for the airplane.

ZUCCARO: They're responsible for the crew. They're the final decision authority.

ZUCCARO: And and so it's a big deal.

SPRAGUE: One of the things that I'm just curious, during this timeframe, a little bit later than 2001. Did you did your unit have any involvement with Operation Northern Watch?

ZUCCARO: Yes. I deployed.

ZUCCARO: To Turkey.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: That was my first contingency deployment.

SPRAGUE: And what can you tell me about that deployment?

ZUCCARO: Yeah. We flew direct from Eielson to Incirlik, and that was really long. That's probably the longest flight I've ever been on.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

ZUCCARO: I do remember that. I was fairly young. I was still copilot. And I remember my crew.

ZUCCARO: And it was the year of the hanging Chad. I remember the hanging Chad with Al Gore and George Bush, because that was the only thing that was on TV. That whole deployment was the hanging Chad.

SPRAGUE: Oh. What year was.

ZUCCARO: Oh, oh, two, maybe one.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. For the election? Yeah.

ZUCCARO: Yeah.

ZUCCARO: And I.

ZUCCARO: It was a good.

ZUCCARO: Eye opener because it was different than the mission sets that I had been doing. So I had been flying to all over the Pacific for sure, and and the world in the US. And it was the first time, though, that I hadn't flown into how you have a more of a stationary air. Right? So you're you're hitting fighters and sometimes bombers in, in a area.

ZUCCARO: That they're staying. So it's just.

ZUCCARO: A different type of thing. And then you really had this sense like we didn't want to fly into Syria.

ZUCCARO: And and that was it wouldn't be a wolves. It would be an international incident.

ZUCCARO: So the stakes were higher for sure.

SPRAGUE: If you could tell me for that Northern Watch operation. How does in the most general sense, how does how does the sequence work? You you gas up the planes on the I don't know. You load the planes up on the ground. You take off. Tell me walk me through that a little bit.

ZUCCARO: And so we were we were stationed at Incirlik. And the fighters would be based out of different bases. We'd meet up in an area that the fighters will be.

ZUCCARO: Closer to wherever the threat is, and then they'll keep the tankers removed from that out of it, out of range of Sams and and other weapons. And so your fighters will come out to the area that the tankers are in and receive their gas and then go back closer to the to the threat. So you have a lot of airplanes in a confined area. So we would go up and set up an orbit. A tanker does an orbit, which is just a big, big oval pattern for hours and hours sometimes until all your gas is gone or until the planned amount of gas is gone. So it's it is not a lot of changes scenery for that portion of the flight. But it's important, again, because the fighters are going towards the threat. And if they're prosecuting targets and in such, then they're burning a lot more gas. So you're always you know, it's not a a set time. There's a set time where you think they'll be up, but sometimes they come early, sometimes they come late, sometimes they take more gas, sometimes they take less.

ZUCCARO: So but we did did the full.

ZUCCARO: Complement of Navy aircraft, Air Force aircraft, Naito, ally aircraft. That's the thing about the KC 135. Even the US tanker forces, we supply most of the air refueling to our NATO allies. There's no other country that has as many tankers as we do. So we do a lot of taking to.

ZUCCARO: To other nations.

SPRAGUE: Does it take a lot of calculations to determine what your fuel load can be, or is that.

ZUCCARO: Oh, we have a pretty we have a do over anyway. But you're you know, you're going to.

ZUCCARO: Start with how long is your runway? And then you've got to factor in your temperature. And then you've got to factor in your surface conditions. So if it's wet or I see your or what have you. But but all of that, when I talk about the takeoff data, you know, that's how much fuel can you have and.

ZUCCARO: Still take off. And in those type of scenarios.

ZUCCARO: You're going to take off max fuel.

ZUCCARO: Load. And so.

ZUCCARO: That's different to because on training missions and a lot of missions, you're not going to take all the gas that you possibly can, but in.

ZUCCARO: Those type of missions you are. So that would.

ZUCCARO: Be another difference, too, is, you know, we're taking off really heavy compared to what we train.

ZUCCARO: With.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So you're you're in Turkey. How long about how long was that short?

ZUCCARO: At that time, the guard was.

ZUCCARO: Swapping out about 14 days or 14 days.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So then you come back to Alaska, about 2005. It looks like you change positions. You become chief of scheduling. Mm hmm.

ZUCCARO: So I got hired. I went from being a guard.

ZUCCARO: Boom. Part timer, DSG. All terms for the same. The same employment status to a full time position as an ADR. So as a as an add your, your like an active duty full time person. Same benefits, same pay structure.

SPRAGUE: And when was that? Oh, roughly.

ZUCCARO: 2002.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So it's pretty early on, maybe 2003.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Definitely.

ZUCCARO: Before I had my daughter and she was born in 2003, so probably 2002.

ZUCCARO: Which is really.

ZUCCARO: Unheard of, except in.

ZUCCARO: Alaska. So those are very coveted positions.

ZUCCARO: At that time, the airline wasn't hiring like crazy. So when you come on full time, you get all the full time benefits and retirement points start adding up. So because Alaska and Fairbanks is is is where it is, there wasn't as much competition because people, frankly.

ZUCCARO: Don't want to live there.

ZUCCARO: A lot of people.

ZUCCARO: Don't want to live there. And so long way.

ZUCCARO: To say, as I was very fortunate as a lieutenant, I came on air. And with that, though, comes a full time job. So you go from being a pilot in and all you really need to do is your pilot stuff when you take that full time job. You're a pilot with all your pilot stuff and you're running, you're in a shop. So my first shop was current ops, and current operations is where you do all the mission planning. You do all the flight plans, you do all the trip planning, which I love. I love doing that stuff. So I would do all that, run all that. How much fuel can we take off with? How far can we go? Where are we going to land? Where are they going to stay? You know, all of those. So I started in current ops and current ops and scheduling, you know, go glove in hand because you're scheduling missions and then you got to.

ZUCCARO: Plan them and there's.

ZUCCARO: Trips that you're not going to take because, you know, the airfield isn't.

ZUCCARO: Suitable or some other factor.

ZUCCARO: So it's pretty high pace. Things change all the time. You're constantly rework and stuff is just a high volume, high energy type shop. And and I really loved it.

ZUCCARO: And I love the people I worked with in there.

SPRAGUE: How do you how what was your experience with the intersection of being at EGR and people on Drill coming in and going out and how that how did that work?

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So there's there's a.

ZUCCARO: Lot of thrash and.

ZUCCARO: Push and pull.

ZUCCARO: And.

ZUCCARO: You have it easier.

ZUCCARO: And I do and you know, grass is greener.

ZUCCARO: But that's that's pretty normal. So your full time.

ZUCCARO: Staff doctrinally are there to provide the infrastructure for the part timers to come in and train. And so you're you're there to set that up.

ZUCCARO: It you're more.

ZUCCARO: Combined than that in.

ZUCCARO: Reality. But there's Devon drill weekends.

ZUCCARO: I mean that's a that's a huge event every month. There's training that has to get accomplished. There's an influx of people. There's people who should be there that aren't there that then you got to figure out how you're going to train them later on in the month.

ZUCCARO: But that's. That's the cycle of the guard. Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: Did you you mentioned current ops. And was that then later you became a chief of scheduling or are they one and the same or.

ZUCCARO: No, they're they're similar, but I think.

ZUCCARO: Current ops and then and was in scheduling I think. And then I was the chief of scheduling.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. What does the you had mentioned it both pre-interview and other interviews. What is that dynamic like where you're a pilot and your but then you're also a commander? What are those two.

ZUCCARO: Roles.

SPRAGUE: At any at the squadron level? At the flight level? At the. Yeah, at the group level. At the wing level. What? Tell me about that.

ZUCCARO: Just another.

ZUCCARO: Job.

ZUCCARO: So when I was chief of scheduling.

ZUCCARO: I have a full time job in chapter one, and being a pilot is kind of a full time job. But then when you become a commander and you can be a part timer and be a commander, but then your responsibilities or taking care of the people and all the stuff that goes along with that. So it's a it's another layer.

ZUCCARO: Another another type of responsibility.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So let's get back here. 27 Looks like you attended some training or got a master's degree. Tell me about that.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I would say before we moved.

ZUCCARO: There, so we're we're about 2003, I think. Okay. So during that time frame, I've got a full time job. I'm also a pilot, but I started having pregnancies, so I actually had.

ZUCCARO: Five pregnancies.

ZUCCARO: During the time that I was there and had.

ZUCCARO: Two successful.

ZUCCARO: Births and trying to manage a flying. And at that time, the military was not.

ZUCCARO: They were trying to figure.

ZUCCARO: Out how to support.

ZUCCARO: Put it nicely. They're trying to figure out.

ZUCCARO: How to support pregnant women, particularly in flying squadrons. And so your by regulation not allowed to fly through that first trimester, you can get a waiver to fly during the second trimester and then the third trimester you can't and then you're out with your newborn and back. And that really sets you off track with everybody else. And it's it's extremely difficult. So what most people did in me included, is.

ZUCCARO: May not find out you were pregnant until the second trimester so you could.

ZUCCARO: Keep that currency going in, that training going and then try and get that waiver during the second. So really, you were just taking that third trimester off and that the latter. That's a delicate and a delicate balance to to strike.

ZUCCARO: And so for me, being in the squadron, you're right at.

ZUCCARO: The, you know, the where you're in AC and now you're trying to upgrade to instructor pilot and you know that any pregnancy is going to side rail a lot of this. And so.

ZUCCARO: During this phase in during my.

ZUCCARO: Generation of that your question about, you know what are the differences for men and women. It was really.

ZUCCARO: Difficult to navigate that. And I think there was one other female pilot.

ZUCCARO: When I was at that.

ZUCCARO: Stage. Typically, there be.

ZUCCARO: One other other females would come and they'd.

ZUCCARO: Leave. And and I think at one point.

ZUCCARO: Maybe there were there were three of us, you know, but.

ZUCCARO: There certainly.

ZUCCARO: Weren't any real peers had to work.

ZUCCARO: Through that with.

ZUCCARO: So as a notable for where we are today, I think we're far better off and and really do a much better job of making it so that our fliers can can continue to fly and don't get so side stepped when they want to have a family.

ZUCCARO: But that was that was a difficult time.

SPRAGUE: Now, what were some of the adaptations that you had to do to have in pregnancy and continue in your role?

ZUCCARO: Well.

ZUCCARO: You just kind of get through it.

ZUCCARO: So my second.

ZUCCARO: Child.

ZUCCARO: Actually flew.

ZUCCARO: Through that.

ZUCCARO: Second trimester.

ZUCCARO: And I was about nine. I was 19 weeks and I was pregnant and I was in the shop and I told a boom operator, female boom operator. I was like.

ZUCCARO: Hey, you know, something's going on and this just doesn't feel quite.

ZUCCARO: Right. And she's like. You need to you need to go to the hospital.

ZUCCARO: I was like, well, I was a scheduling.

ZUCCARO: Meeting at one and she's like, Well, it's 11. You can make it down to the Army hospital, which is where we had to go get seen and you can come back. And she goes, I'll get the meeting started. If you if you if you're not back. So I, I left and I went to the Army hospital and and I checked in and they there's a long story that goes with it. But essentially I was put into the hospital and I didn't come out for ten weeks.

ZUCCARO: So and I was like, but I have a scheduling meeting and they're like, Yeah, you don't anymore. And so I went through ten weeks of bed rest.

ZUCCARO: Five degrees, head lower, didn't get out of bed, lost all all my muscles couldn't walk. Ended up with a C-section and a significantly premature child who was.

ZUCCARO: Born and did great. He but he.

ZUCCARO: Went into the Nic you and then there is eight weeks into the NEC you and then I come back out. I come back home and I'm trying to get back on flying status. And and they considered the recoup time when he was in the NEC you and used up all my maternity leave even though I'm caring for a child that's in the ICU. They didn't give me any any grace.

ZUCCARO: They gave me a p t test. I was like, I just got, you know, physically cut two ways. I couldn't walk like eight weeks ago. And they're like, oh, do bad. You know, you got to take your physical fitness test. Okay.

ZUCCARO: So my child ended up going back into the hospital with meningitis, so I took some more leave. But shortly after that, I actually deployed to Guam. And and you just at that time, you just got back into the game as quick as you could put your head down and and tried to. Yeah. Try to pretend like life wasn't.

ZUCCARO: Hard but life was really hard.

SPRAGUE: Was that deployment to Guam was that you were still in the same unit and it was a just a deployment? Yep.

ZUCCARO: And it doesn't it may not show up because we've been going to.

ZUCCARO: The.

ZUCCARO: Theater support package.

ZUCCARO: They've made me do a couple of things for a very long time. Tankers would go down to Guam to Anderson. We still do and support the bombers that would rotate in and out of there through a theater security package.

ZUCCARO: Now, they consider it a Pacific.

ZUCCARO: Deployment now, but it's not a named operation. It's the theater security package. Okay. Or it used to be called the bomber security package.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: But then that.

ZUCCARO: Is, you know, it's interesting in the Pacific, and I'm really glad that I been able to see the Pacific operations pre 911 and post 911 and then and then now.

ZUCCARO: And really the.

ZUCCARO: Tankers, you know, have been solid doing the same type of preventative support for decades.

ZUCCARO: And we're very.

ZUCCARO: Well practiced in it because we've been doing it for decades. We know the challenges. We, you know, not saying that we have all the answers, we certainly don't. But the experience that this nation has.

ZUCCARO: Operating in that theater.

ZUCCARO: Through multiple phases of history is going to serve.

ZUCCARO: Us well.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So I think we're up to, 0506 in that neighborhood somewhere. Yeah.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I tried left and I decided between the medical stuff that was.

ZUCCARO: Going on with my child and Alaska is really far away from the lower 48 and family support and.

ZUCCARO: Some other stuff that was going on.

ZUCCARO: My husband retired and I found another job, full time job in Florida at the 61st Air and Space Operations Center.

ZUCCARO: So in 2007, 2000, eight, 2008.

ZUCCARO: Is when we left Alaska.

ZUCCARO: And.

ZUCCARO: Moved to.

ZUCCARO: Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. Okay, which was great. So I in the guard, in order to move locations.

ZUCCARO: You have to apply to a job and get hired.

ZUCCARO: So I applied to the Florida Air National Guard.

ZUCCARO: As a tanker duty officer with the six oh first Air and Space Operations Center, which is manned by the one overseas air operations group, Florida Air National Guard. And then we moved to Florida.

SPRAGUE: And I'm with you with the 101st Air operations group. What? What does a tanker airlift duty officer do? Please help.

ZUCCARO: Me. So we talked about the alert that was set.

ZUCCARO: At Eielson through the Alaska north.

ZUCCARO: And region. So the Air and Space Operations Center.

ZUCCARO: Is the cone are the continental US nor ad region. And the operation center is where the North mission sets are planned and executed from. So the six oh first AOC is where the Homeland Defense mission, the Operation Noble.

ZUCCARO: Eagle is, is controlled out of sea to the out of as well as the NorthCom mission sets.

ZUCCARO: Which is all the domestic.

ZUCCARO: Responses.

ZUCCARO: So there's three and four and regions. There is Alaska, North and region, the Canadian natural region in the continental.

ZUCCARO: U.S. north and region. And the tanker airlift duty officer does the.

ZUCCARO: The planning and execution for both the co-owner, the Continental and the Canada the Canadian.

SPRAGUE: And that's for air. For airlift. Tanker Airlift.

ZUCCARO: So, yeah. So in the operation center.

ZUCCARO: You have a air mobility division. And so in that air mobility division, you have airlift. So you have a tanker, so you have a aero med cell, all things mobility. So the duty officer is like an entry level position in that air mobility division.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: But they sit out on the floor and they work with.

ZUCCARO: This structure that determines when they're going to launch those alerts, when they're going to respond and do homeland defense. So it's in close coordination with the FAA.

ZUCCARO: And the Army and.

ZUCCARO: A bunch of other entities. But the tanker duty officer.

ZUCCARO: Is the one there that's going to make the phone.

ZUCCARO: Call when they're told to launch the tanker that launches the tanker.

SPRAGUE: Wow. Okay. Anything you remember from that? Looks like it was, oh, 8 or 9.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I took that position. And at the time. Excuse me.

SPRAGUE: Do you need a break or.

ZUCCARO: You know, I think I'm good. So I took that position.

ZUCCARO: Thinking that I would have to give up flying kind of at the peak of my flying career and that it was going to be shift work because out on the floor it is shift work and that it was a major position that was not promotable to attend it. Colonel It was.

ZUCCARO: Capped at major.

ZUCCARO: But I determined for many reasons that that was that there was a steady income, steady medical, closer to family. And it was it was what we needed to do. So we all moved there.

ZUCCARO: And I did that duty officer position for a very short time and they said, Hey, we.

ZUCCARO: Actually need an airlift.

ZUCCARO: Control team.

ZUCCARO: Chief, which is the one that does.

ZUCCARO: Makes the ATO the air tasking order.

ZUCCARO: And then ACO, which is that area order for Operation Noble Eagle. And so it's a back office that does all the planning. So my current ops experience and my scheduling experience, now I'm doing that on that. So the tactical level, more of the operational level and it's so on that air tasking order is all that airplane. So I became the team chief pretty quickly, which was great because that got me out of shift work. And then I ran the duty officers who were out on the floor and I ran a team of planners that would do the air tasking order planning. And I was embedded in all the other divisions, and I loved it. A lot of autonomy at ABA's and the Air Mobility Division. But I worked for the Combat Plans Division and.

ZUCCARO: The Straten Division.

ZUCCARO: And Execution Division. And so I had a lot of autonomy, and.

ZUCCARO: I had good bosses.

ZUCCARO: They just kind of let me go. And I did.

ZUCCARO: All sorts of things with very little permission, but they liked.

ZUCCARO: The results. So I just kind of kept going.

SPRAGUE: And at this point, you had achieved the rank of major?

ZUCCARO: Yes. Yeah. So I was I came to the.

ZUCCARO: Operation center as a young major.

ZUCCARO: Okay. And so I worked as a major. And then somewhere in there.

ZUCCARO: A couple of years into it, they said, Actually, you can fly because we have a couple of positions that have this correct code, the AP code. And I was like, That sounds great.

ZUCCARO: But Florida Air National Guard didn't have any tankers, so I became.

ZUCCARO: An attached flier with the 1/17 in Birmingham. So about once a month I'd go up to Birmingham and I'd fly with the Birmingham unit just for training purposes. And that.

ZUCCARO: Helped me.

ZUCCARO: Really stay connected to the mission and to the field. And I loved being a pilot, so it was really good to go back into the cockpit.

ZUCCARO: And so I flew with them for probably three years, maybe four years.

SPRAGUE: And I'm just curious, you're attached to this Air National Guard unit to fly. Was there ever an instance where you as the air fueling control team chief was were cutting orders or doing planning for this Air National Guard unit?

ZUCCARO: Oh, definitely, because they have the.

ZUCCARO: Noble Eagle mission.

ZUCCARO: And so they they liked it because.

ZUCCARO: They had a direct in to.

ZUCCARO: Taken over.

ZUCCARO: As a unit.

ZUCCARO: So it was.

ZUCCARO: A it was a synergistic.

ZUCCARO: Relationship, too. But it really helped me because.

ZUCCARO: I am doing the planning for this unit and in five others.

ZUCCARO: And so I would.

ZUCCARO: Go visit the other units and say, okay, you know, what's working for you? What's not? What's the command and control? We had air mobility Command. Layered into that commanding control because of the authorities and delegations. So it was a lot of people working in networking and. And dispelling myths about what really goes on at this air operations center and reassuring and say, yeah, we really know what we're doing it.

ZUCCARO: But when you get the fields.

ZUCCARO: Perspective of, you know, why did it come down.

ZUCCARO: That way or why didn't you tell us this or that? So it was it was beneficial.

ZUCCARO: To be up there.

ZUCCARO: Working with them.

SPRAGUE: During this time and during these missions. Did you have any. With the defense of the homeland, in particular Operation Noble Eagle? I'm going to use that now. A general term as a civilian. What did you have any things that happened while you were in that role that maybe didn't make the news but that you could tell me about that were of interest there?

ZUCCARO: I don't think there is anything necessarily that didn't make the news. It all makes the news eventually. Yeah. Yeah. But I definitely.

ZUCCARO: Had a front row seat and participation in like the BP oil spill. Haitian earthquake. At oil was when we went to New York in a small airplane. There were aircraft, sadly, that had hypoxic events and then would coast out and. And we'd follow them. We'd launch on them and follow them and have to have to watch them not recover. There were it was a.

ZUCCARO: Real.

ZUCCARO: Hub because you don't just have the NORAD's homeland defense, but you have all that NorthCom. So all the floods, all the hurricanes, Sandy and all of those. And and you're watching that. You know, the mobility division respond with the airlift. And so I did a little bit with there and I left not a lot. Because they had their own cell and then all the support and we'd use tankers in some of those as cargo. Yeah. So you're doing that coordination presidential elections where you know, you do all the coverage for that. We still doing space shuttle launches where they put up.

ZUCCARO: A cap for the space shuttle launches Super Bowls, NASCAR races. You know, we we.

ZUCCARO: Oftentimes have a lot of air coverage that maybe the general.

ZUCCARO: Public doesn't realize.

SPRAGUE: Any with a smile. Any thoughts on the recent Chinese balloon going through the air space?

ZUCCARO: We it was one of the times where a lot of my old.

ZUCCARO: Friends, we were definitely chatting and making jokes and saying, boy.

ZUCCARO: I'm glad I'm not at the operation center today because we know what they're going through.

ZUCCARO: We had the. I can't remember the J. J lands. It's a big weather balloon type thing that came untethered and drug out mile long corn up and down the East Coast for a while that was supposed to shoot itself down and it didn't. And we all went through that together and we made a lot of a lot of correlations between that.

ZUCCARO: And you can laugh about it now, but they're.

ZUCCARO: Definitely high stress events. And we're trying to determine what is the intent. Because up until 911, nobody ever thought that somebody would intentionally run an airplane into something and weaponize that.

SPRAGUE: What I have to ask, as a pilot, you have do you have any thoughts on them being used as weapons or what that what's going through your head as you're seeing that versus somebody who's just been a passenger? I mean.

ZUCCARO: Oh, it's horrible.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

ZUCCARO: It really is horrible.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. Were there any. I want to make sure we get everything covered here for and I want to make sure we cover it in sequence here. Where did you have any operations in that time where you were in support or involved in planning? For sure you did. Operation Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom or.

ZUCCARO: No, because that's not our.

ZUCCARO: Area of responsibility. Okay. We have that on us.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

ZUCCARO: We I did do.

ZUCCARO: And I point the picture on the wall. The Vancouver Canadian Winter Olympics.

ZUCCARO: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So I got to do that air refueling plan for that work with the Canadians.

ZUCCARO: And I got the first American to be awarded the Canadian Award, which is pretty cool because at the six O.

ZUCCARO: First, it's a bi national organization. So. Because we have Canadian law and region. There were a lot of Canadians that worked in the structure of the air operations center. And because the Canadians have a very limited amount of tankers, the US supports their air refueling operations. So when it came to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, we did the planning to do the air.

ZUCCARO: Refueling support for that. So that that was one of.

ZUCCARO: My my favorite.

ZUCCARO: Things.

SPRAGUE: And was that what year was that? In about.

ZUCCARO: Ten.

SPRAGUE: 2010. Okay. Yep. Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. And through that. Came some process.

ZUCCARO: Improvements which allowed me to make changes to where the US tankers, which air tasking order they were on when they supported Canada, which then would lead to if any other US aircraft ever needed to support Canada.

ZUCCARO: How process wise.

ZUCCARO: That would happen and in so it's not a very exciting topic.

ZUCCARO: But but it was an example of how.

ZUCCARO: I had a lot of autonomy to to really look at something and say.

ZUCCARO: Hey, we can make this better.

SPRAGUE: Mm hmm. And so then I've got we had talked about it already and we're kind of already there, actually. Yeah. As the deputy of Air Mobility Division chief, I want to say that correctly. Sorry. Deputy Air Mobility Division Chief till May 2014. And you're in Essex.

ZUCCARO: That was a really short stint. So I had been.

ZUCCARO: Ever feeling team chief for a long time and really liked my position and a lot of autonomy and didn't have to sit in the air mobility division.

ZUCCARO: And I was that it was on top of the.

ZUCCARO: World and it was time to move on. And and I didn't I'd kind of outgrown position in my boss had recognized that. And you said you need to come up to the mobility division. I was kind of being a pill. I now I was.

ZUCCARO: Because you told me I was and I totally believe and it was so strange, one of the days and I was begrudgingly.

ZUCCARO: With my box of staff moving down the hallway to my new office and trying to change my attitude. And my boss of the air operations.

ZUCCARO: Center said, Hey.

ZUCCARO: The general wants to see you. He's come into my office in 20 minutes. You need to be down there.

ZUCCARO: And I was like, because the first.

ZUCCARO: Air Force is the number two Air Force. It's actually the only number of Air Force that has a Guardsman as a commander.

ZUCCARO: And they're.

ZUCCARO: Literally right.

ZUCCARO: Across the street from the air operations center. And they're the number.

ZUCCARO: Two Air Force for law at NorthCom.

ZUCCARO: And so they had a.

ZUCCARO: New three star general, Maj or Lieutenant General Air.

ZUCCARO: And I had briefed him.

ZUCCARO: When he first came in. I can't remember something in regards to tankers and some issue. We were working in that.

ZUCCARO: So in my mind on this day with my boss, I'm like, Well, that's strange because I, you know, I.

ZUCCARO: Just briefed him and nobody's that interested in tanker.

ZUCCARO: Stuff that they'd want to talk to you about it again. But okay, if you know, I can whip that out. And he's like, No, he's come in to talk to you.

ZUCCARO: About being at.

ZUCCARO: Or he's come in to talk to.

ZUCCARO: You about the executive officer position.

ZUCCARO: And I said, Well, that's really strange because I don't know much about.

ZUCCARO: That, and I really don't know anybody who'd.

ZUCCARO: Be interested. And why are you why would he talk.

ZUCCARO: To me about it? And he's.

ZUCCARO: Like, he's going to ask you if you would be a good fit.

ZUCCARO: To apply for that position.

ZUCCARO: And I'm like, Well, why would he want me to do that? Because somebody told him you'd be a good candidate. Mike Okay, so I've used up.

ZUCCARO: You know, like ten minutes of my 20 minutes to get my head around what is going.

ZUCCARO: On. And, you know, ten minutes later.

ZUCCARO: I'm across the desk from this lieutenant general, and he's like, Somebody told.

ZUCCARO: Me you'd make a good executive officer. And I'm like, Oh, I don't know who tell you that? I said, I'm your tanker gal. You know, that's a you're a fighter guy. I'm a tanker gal, you know, And I'm going to retire in 2017, this, like 2014.

ZUCCARO: And and I'm.

ZUCCARO: Pretty sure that positions for people who.

ZUCCARO: Need to go.

ZUCCARO: On.

ZUCCARO: And he's like yeah.

ZUCCARO: He goes typically it is he.

ZUCCARO: Goes but.

ZUCCARO: I'm not looking for somebody who's going.

ZUCCARO: To use the position because I need a really good exac. And, and I said, Well, I don't know much about that. And I said, Well, can you keep confidences? And I was like, I was a bartender for.

ZUCCARO: A long time. I know really well how to keep confidences. And he's like, Well, that's a good start. He goes, If I give you my credit card, are you going to go spend money on it? I'm like, No, not going to do that. And he's he said, and I told him, I said, Well, you.

ZUCCARO: Really need somebody with fighter expertise, don't you? And he goes, I have.

ZUCCARO: Fighter expertise. I need people.

ZUCCARO: With other.

ZUCCARO: Expertise. And I'm like, okay. And I said, Can I can I think about it? You know, like I've had this notion now for.

ZUCCARO: 20 minutes and he's like, You have till Monday. This is.

ZUCCARO: A Friday. I said, okay. And I and I went home and I thought about it, and I had a girlfriend.

ZUCCARO: Who had done the position for a different commander.

ZUCCARO: And her experience was not great at all. It was very.

ZUCCARO: Long hours and young kids, you know, and I in my mind, I just had to survive for another couple of years. And I was done. And I took that. I applied for the position. He selected me for that position. And I remember talking to him afterwards. I was like a general matter.

ZUCCARO: I like, if this isn't working out, just tell me, because I got a pretty good gig going on at the C A's and I.

ZUCCARO: Have fired many people.

ZUCCARO: I would have no problem firing you. And I was like, okay, all right. Well, at least we're at least are honest in that position. Oh, my goodness. Did it turn.

ZUCCARO: Out to be just the most.

ZUCCARO: Rewarding.

ZUCCARO: Experience I could have possibly.

ZUCCARO: Ever walked into? He was the most wonderful officer.

ZUCCARO: He was all about, you know, explaining things to me. Let me in to two meetings just so that I could get exposure to to the higher level. And I truly valued that.

ZUCCARO: That year, the executive officer, you know.

SPRAGUE: And you were at or you were a lieutenant colonel at that point?

ZUCCARO: I was.

ZUCCARO: A lieutenant.

SPRAGUE: Colonel, yeah. And also, about that time, you might have taken a leadership course with Homeland Security. Well, yeah. Is that before or after?

ZUCCARO: It was during.

SPRAGUE: During. Okay.

ZUCCARO: So unbeknownst to me.

ZUCCARO: He was he was working on.

ZUCCARO: Because I was set.

ZUCCARO: I was going to retire in October of 2017. I would have been 20 years appointed and full time active duty retirement. And that's I wanted to be home. My 14 and 12 year old would have been at the time frame. But he was like, keep your options open. You know, I.

ZUCCARO: Think I think you could go on and and be a commander and on my knees. But you have to do your work college like all I really want to do that. And in the.

ZUCCARO: Midst of that, though.

ZUCCARO: He is like, you know, you haven't been to.

ZUCCARO: School for for a long time because there's a really good Homeland Defense School. Why don't you go to that and.

ZUCCARO: See what you think?

ZUCCARO: So this Homeland Defense School was run by another guardsman, the tag of New Hampshire General Rice, at the time. He ended up being the head of the Air National Guard. But yeah.

ZUCCARO: Anyways, he ran this course.

ZUCCARO: At Harvard through the Harvard program and it was fantastic. So during that time frame, we had the 911 fire chief come and speak to us directly. We had the on scene commander for the Boston Marathon shooting and General Rice was the tag at the time.

ZUCCARO: Of the Boston.

ZUCCARO: Marathon shooting. So we got a firsthand accounting of him.

ZUCCARO: And the thing that's.

ZUCCARO: Different about the guard from the active duty is when you take your oath, you take it to the governor and to the president. So there's a whole state mission set, right, that the governor can use his guard for or her guard for.

ZUCCARO: And so learning those nuances, particularly.

ZUCCARO: In different scenarios like the Boston Marathon, you know, who who had his military how's the guard fit into that? Has the local police same with 911 and the Sollie, The on scene fire commander for 911 was the same on scene fire chief for this only. So he got the firsthand accounting of that.

ZUCCARO: And really the course.

ZUCCARO: Was designed to help you understand how your you can partner during that both legally and synergistically.

ZUCCARO: How you can partner up with the guard.

ZUCCARO: And your local.

ZUCCARO: Responding forces. So it's a fantastic course.

SPRAGUE: And the backing up a little bit, the lieutenant general who you worked for, his name was Lenzner or Lenzner. Editor editor. How do you spell that?

ZUCCARO: Echo Tango. Tango. Echo.

ZUCCARO: Romeo.

SPRAGUE: Eder. Got it. I got tango. Tango, Echo, Romeo. Got it. No problem.

ZUCCARO: Bill. Out at.

SPRAGUE: Bill Hader Okay. Did you have a I've got to ask. You mentioned it in kind of passing. Was he a mentor? Who were some mentors that stick out in your head over here? You know, not only him, but.

ZUCCARO: Right.

SPRAGUE: Looking back as well at that point.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I'll I'll pick one from Alaska. She was a female navigator. She was the only one that ever.

ZUCCARO: Pulled me aside as a female and said, Do not forego having children. The military will never encourage you to and they'll do a lot of things that you'll think that it's difficult and and bad timing and it will be difficult and it will be bad timing. But do not skip that. And that really made a difference for me.

ZUCCARO: And she was.

ZUCCARO: Right because I took five to get to and she had had similar experiences where I said, You don't get to control.

ZUCCARO: This.

ZUCCARO: So you better.

ZUCCARO: Start well or you will run out of time. So she was.

ZUCCARO: The one too. And I had another dear friend at at at Eielson who helped me figure out how to be a mom in the military.

ZUCCARO: Which was difficult, really difficult at that time.

ZUCCARO: So those two women probably there in Alaska at that time was difficult.

ZUCCARO: Just leave it at that. And then in Florida, I came in at the same time that two other majors came in. And we if you've ever been on a highly functioning team.

ZUCCARO: You just know.

ZUCCARO: Right?

ZUCCARO: It's there's functioning teams and then there's highly functioning teams. And these two other majors we are all three of us came in, all three of us got along and we were at the top like nothing was impossible.

ZUCCARO: And it was really.

ZUCCARO: The first time I had experienced collaborate, collaboration on that level. And so we became, you know, peers.

ZUCCARO: To each other.

ZUCCARO: And they did some amazing things. The Haitian earthquake, with the setting up of Ramsi, which had been a regional movement cooperation coordination center. And even though Haiti obviously isn't in the NorthCom air, they had the expertise to do that. And so watching them take something that had never been done and really making it better for a whole nother country. And they they did all the slot times for all the airplanes that went in for that response for the Haitian earthquake, not just military aircraft. And that whole system was the brainchild of something that they were trying to set up after Hurricane Katrina, but really got thrust into this needed. And it was in its infancy and it went from infancy to execution in hours.

ZUCCARO: And so being being around, I had never Alaska was kind of a struggle with people. Except for some for a few. But there was a lot of struggles there trying to fit into a team be be included. And then Florida was exactly opposite.

ZUCCARO: And and so I would say mentors. There were really peer mentors that.

ZUCCARO: I hadn't experienced before. And then the first Air Force was definitely General Air.

SPRAGUE: Do you want to recognize any of those friends or mentors or.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Yeah. So JJ Grindrod, who I'm very good friends with now, and Dave Smith.

ZUCCARO: And myself, were the.

ZUCCARO: Three that kind of came in at the same time. But I and I enjoyed working for my boss, Brad Graff.

ZUCCARO: Steve because.

ZUCCARO: Lucky.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And oh, and Luke Mullins.

ZUCCARO: He was. He was a boom operator in plans. He was really good. Good to have Tim Spencer. I could go on all day.

SPRAGUE: I bet you could. So jumping back to your in your role as executive officer to Lieutenant General Ed, where you were while you were there, were you involved in Operation Inherent Resolve?

ZUCCARO: No, that was that.

ZUCCARO: Was more when I came.

SPRAGUE: Later when you came here. Okay. Well, we'll get back to that then. Okay. So you get done being the executive officer.

ZUCCARO: And so he so General Ed said, let's put your career back on track. And I was like, it is tracking right towards.

ZUCCARO: 2017 just where I needed to track to. And he's like.

ZUCCARO: Oh, the Guard has this command program. If you do your war college.

ZUCCARO: Then we could consider you for a command. And I never considered command.

ZUCCARO: Because in the air operations.

ZUCCARO: Center construct, it's divisions, right? So you have division chiefs that's a little different than commanders. And as you know, I knew what a squadron, command and group command and stuff were from miles and more from the field structure. But I had never really considered the commander as a separate type of responsibility and job.

ZUCCARO: So I was like, No.

ZUCCARO: I don't know.

ZUCCARO: And I am. I have a hard time saying.

ZUCCARO: No to an open door.

ZUCCARO: Like, let's see what I see. What's on the other side of that. It seems like if you do your work on edge, then at least.

ZUCCARO: You know you'd be in the running. And I was like, Fine, I'll do my air war college.

ZUCCARO: And I did Air War College in 42 days. It was it was awful.

ZUCCARO: That I did it.

ZUCCARO: And I had spent and I don't feel bad about it because the system allowed it. And I had.

ZUCCARO: Done the whole master's.

ZUCCARO: Program for aCSI.

ZUCCARO: So I had spent about two, two and a half years doing HSC PME to the master's level, and Air War College was very similar and a lot of the material was similar.

ZUCCARO: So I just put my nose to the grindstone. They'd give you a paper to write.

ZUCCARO: I'd read the paper, I'd turn it and I'd get the next one. I'd spend seven days, write the paper and turn it in and got my air War college done and in record time. And that allowed general error to put me on and put me in to compete for the squandering Commander's command sponsored list.

ZUCCARO: And what that program is.

ZUCCARO: Is to develop commanders. When you're on it, then you have to go find a unit to go to that needs a commander. But the benefit to the unit is you come with resources, you come paid for, you come as an aid, your with your own rank, control.

ZUCCARO: Grade taken care of. So there's some.

ZUCCARO: Attractant for the unit and it's developmental for the profit for the.

ZUCCARO: Person. And then the guard bureau ideally gets experienced commanders. So he got me into that program. They selected me and.

ZUCCARO: Then I had to find a unit and I started asking around who might be commanders at the squadron level. And Milwaukee was one wing that had a gap and, and they needed.

ZUCCARO: My type build. So I came up here and I interviewed with with Milwaukee. And I think our bureau's intention was probably for me to come up here for a year on the squadron command tour and then go to Nagbe. They, they.

ZUCCARO: Like that to happen, which would have meant I moved to D.C. but came to Milwaukee and became the 1/28 Operation support Squadron commander and, and started by my Wisconsin guardsmen and and started that career change here.

SPRAGUE: Couple of questions. Do you have to swear a new oath when you come to the Wisconsin guard or.

ZUCCARO: Did you go.

ZUCCARO: Swearing to the governor.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And then help me out with the operations support what You've given a description here, but what help me out with what that is.

ZUCCARO: So in a wing.

ZUCCARO: And a tactical wing, which we are at the 120 yellow wing commander, and then you have four group commanders, there's a maintenance group, medical group, mission support group and operations group. So within the operations group, there are two.

ZUCCARO: Squadrons.

ZUCCARO: Now, the air refueling squadron, which has most of your part time pilots, and boom's your operations support squadron, which has your full time pilots, your full time booms and your full time support staff like Crew Comm and Intel and AFB and Airfield support.

ZUCCARO: So it's its Operation.

ZUCCARO: Support squadron is mostly the full time or is that run the.

ZUCCARO: Operations group?

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what was it like for you coming into. That role as a leader And how many people were in your in that unit in that squadron?

ZUCCARO: Roughly 100 to 115.

ZUCCARO: To Guard units have typically not.

ZUCCARO: A lot of turnover. And a lot of people grow up in the Guard unit. So any time there is an outsider that comes in, you have to work that outsider.

ZUCCARO: So that was that.

ZUCCARO: Was the first challenge. And I think there is a odd sense of why is she here? Where where did she come from? And if she's on a guard bureau program, guard bureau program, she's likely not to stay. So human nature says, and I want to invest in somebody who's not going to stay.

ZUCCARO: So that was probably.

ZUCCARO: The first challenge.

ZUCCARO: And we just kind of work.

ZUCCARO: Through that stuff now, not being home, you know, I'm trying to learn people's names. You know, you don't have the home field advantage, and yet you're their squadron commander.

ZUCCARO: So you just try and team down and and work through some stuff, some issues going on. Like there's always issues going on and you get to clean up those and yeah. And figure out the way forward. But I don't think it took too long before people.

ZUCCARO: Started to trust that I really didn't have any alternative motives and fairly decent person.

ZUCCARO: And I'm honest, you know, I come to work and try and treat people fairly and so.

SPRAGUE: So tell me about this in your sequence here. You're the operations support squadron Commander 128, and then I have you going for a short time over to the 5 or 6 SAT. Right. Or am I misreading that or is that just.

ZUCCARO: No, that's great. That's a deployment. Okay. So when I came here.

ZUCCARO: Yeah, I don't know. I was here roughly a year, maybe a little bit less, and I deployed to the deed and that's inherent resolve and that's. Sentinel And I think there's a third contingency name in there and not, not come into my mind now, but mostly inherent resolve in Sentinel Freedom.

ZUCCARO: Freedom Sentinel.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And I went just as aircrew.

ZUCCARO: I didn't go as a commander. I was just a basic line crew 60 day deployment and got to see that area of operation because I had not seen it with the Alaska.

ZUCCARO: State, mostly in the Pacific and Turkey and then the air operation center in Florida.

ZUCCARO: We did not deploy. And I was in in Garrison deployed.

ZUCCARO: So I was one of the very few.

ZUCCARO: Tanker pilots and never been to the deed. You know, by this point, the global war on terrorism has been going on for 15 plus years.

ZUCCARO: Every Denker pilot in the world has been to the deed like a million times. So I was.

ZUCCARO: I was glad to have that opportunity to go and and in an experience where most of my peers had been experiencing.

ZUCCARO: From multiple, multiple deployments. But then so I came back and.

ZUCCARO: I was squadron commander. And then about a year later our Pacific deployment. So we deployed at that time for global war on terrorism and then also to that same theater.

ZUCCARO: Support package.

ZUCCARO: Back to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. And so I went on that.

ZUCCARO: Though, as the commander deck commander.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Which is the 506, which was supposed to be just an easy 60 days in Guam and it was anything but. Oh, my goodness. It was it was when Kim Jong un was saying that he was going to launch weapons, Anderson, we had 16 stars coming through.

ZUCCARO: Meaning high profile people in general. And yeah, we in general, golfing with General Shanahan, the pack Elf commander at the time.

ZUCCARO: Heather Wilson, came through it all these people.

ZUCCARO: Came in, Anderson, because it was just kind of this center of operations.

ZUCCARO: It was also during the Olympics that we're going on. And where were the Olympics then and Korea or Japan?

SPRAGUE: Good question.

ZUCCARO: So there was heightened awareness and Kim Jong un said, well, I won't do it during the.

ZUCCARO: During the.

ZUCCARO: Olympics.

ZUCCARO: And, you know, we're flying.

ZUCCARO: Aircraft and Chinese are flying aircraft inside and they're, you know.

ZUCCARO: In an aggressive way. And and we're doing shows of force. And then we had some personnel staff. That had gone on during that deployment. So it was not.

ZUCCARO: An easy 60 days. We came back after that and.

ZUCCARO: You know, is glad you.

SPRAGUE: Now coming back. What was your next role in as a commander? Current role? Oh, no. Sorry. Group commander.

ZUCCARO: I went to group command.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So that by that point, the guard bureau was like, all right, it's been two years. Are you going to you're going to come to the Guard bureau or not?

ZUCCARO: And I was like, No, I'm not going to stay here. So I had applied for that group commander and got that position. So I told the guard.

ZUCCARO: Bureau I was not coming to the Guard bureau, which was fine. I mean, they're.

ZUCCARO: It's a natural progression. And so I stayed on as group.

ZUCCARO: Commander and that's where.

ZUCCARO: I ranked up to oh.

ZUCCARO: Six, which was great, which was I was like, Oh, that was that was never in the initial, you know, plan, but certainly rewarding. And so I'm bonus me during the time I was at the first Air Force. I'm pretty sure this is how it happened because I don't remember putting in for it and somebody put me in. Well, I guess I probably did.

ZUCCARO: On the career progression, say yes, I would go to PME in residence.

ZUCCARO: And lo and behold.

ZUCCARO: They selected me to go to PME in Residence and I was like, Oh goodness, now what? Because, you know, I had done Air War College, I'd done CSC, and I didn't think I was going to become a group commander. And, you know, here I am, I'm progressing. But the plan still is, you know, not to go on for too much longer. You know, now I'm going to go on long enough time to finish out the rank and I'm going to serve where I'm needed to serve. And I felt that was probably group command.

ZUCCARO: But because I had said I would do me in residence and they selected me. Now I had to.

ZUCCARO: Determine what next there.

ZUCCARO: So in the lists of PME.

ZUCCARO: In residence, you can go to Maxwell.

ZUCCARO: For the Air Force, you can.

ZUCCARO: Do another services senior level PME, but then they have these really cool fellowships ones, the corporate fellowship.

ZUCCARO: And so I just.

ZUCCARO: As I was like, Oh, this will never happen, but.

ZUCCARO: This is what I want. So I put corporate fellowship in there and lo and behold, they select me for the corporate fellowship program.

ZUCCARO: But I had just taken the group and.

ZUCCARO: I said, I can't.

ZUCCARO: Step aside for.

ZUCCARO: For a year.

ZUCCARO: They need a group commander. So I deferred it for a year and then I, I can't remember exactly. And maybe I still squadron commander, but.

ZUCCARO: Somewhere in there I.

ZUCCARO: Ended up deferring it for another year, which is never been done.

ZUCCARO: Never heard of. And but they, they came back and they said yeah I will approve the deferral for a second year. And I'm like, okay. And I even had to talk to.

ZUCCARO: General Dunbar, who is the Taga was concerned when I said I was going to turn it down and he was like, Why would you turn that down? And I was like, Well, it's not the right time to leave.

ZUCCARO: Like, I just I can't leave the group right now.

ZUCCARO: We are preparing for a nuclear inspection and stuff.

ZUCCARO: And so he was like, oh, I.

ZUCCARO: You know, I really don't think. And I was like.

ZUCCARO: That's what I'm doing. So I deferred it for a second year.

ZUCCARO: They signed off on it. It comes and goes and it's it's timed to go to the corporate fellowship. And the lady who runs that program, she's like.

ZUCCARO: How did you get a second year deferral?

ZUCCARO: That's that's not you know, we don't do that. I was like.

ZUCCARO: Well, Karen, your name's on the approval. And they're like, oh, I guess we're they.

ZUCCARO: They allowed that to happen. So I got selected to be the We Energies.

ZUCCARO: Corporate fellows at the.

ZUCCARO: Wisconsin Energy.

ZUCCARO: Corporations.

SPRAGUE: And tell me about what you observed in terms of your experience with corporate world versus serving in the military. What was that like?

ZUCCARO: So I had always heard that the skills that you garner.

ZUCCARO: In the military are useful and coveted on the outside. And I never really quite believe that. I know how everybody's.

ZUCCARO: Got skills and, you know, but I think it was an eye opener. Not that one's better.

ZUCCARO: Or the other, but.

ZUCCARO: We really do.

ZUCCARO: Get some good skills in our military experience.

ZUCCARO: And I would say.

ZUCCARO: You know, confidence and making decisions, really good foundation on what is risk and how When do you accept it? When do you not. And so I think realizing that the military does a nice job with those.

ZUCCARO: Particular skill sets and.

ZUCCARO: They're very wanted on that civilian world, they're they're looking for leaders who have the confidence to be decisive and and make those decisions on a risk based analysis.

ZUCCARO: Mm hmm.

SPRAGUE: And tell me a little bit about your experience as a director of the fleet.

ZUCCARO: Oh, my gosh.

ZUCCARO: That is so. So the Corvette Fellowship program you take.

ZUCCARO: We had 19 fellows from across the services of Coast Guard, Army, Navy. And we go out into these Fortune 500 companies. And my year we had Shell and Barclays and AT&T and Team Rubicon and Honeywell and we energy R, w, e, C.

ZUCCARO: And you're supposed to go out and kind of interact with the C suite.

ZUCCARO: And see at that level how they do particularly acquisitions, but also all the other things that occur at that level. And you're really there to kind of observe. You might take on a small project or two.

ZUCCARO: But you're not supposed to have a job. So and you get some training.

ZUCCARO: You know, we got a couple of weeks in D, C with a with a bunch of good speakers and an exercise. We all went down to University of Virginia, the Darden School, and we get a little business staffed so that we're not complete idiots when we go into these Fortune 500 companies.

ZUCCARO: Not sure how well that works. No, it was great schooling. And then you go to your corporation. So I went to my corporation and I walk in day one and my.

ZUCCARO: Vice president wasn't there that day that I fell under. And the very nice secretary showed me to my office and my name was on the door. I was like, This is great.

ZUCCARO: The computer worked first day. That would never happen in the military. And I sit down, I'm arranging.

ZUCCARO: My stuff because I have stuff which never happens in the military either.

ZUCCARO: And supplies in this man comes in at 9:00 and he sits down and I was like, Hi.

ZUCCARO: My name's Dan, I'm your 9:00. I'm like, All right.

ZUCCARO: Didn't know I had a 9:00 with that. This is great. Is the beach there? It is. Nice doggone day. And I was like, Dad, this feels like you think I'm your supervisor. Because you are. And I go, Am I? And he goes, You're our new director of Fleet. I go, All right, What what does the director of Fleet do? I need because, well, I'm one of your three subordinates in there.

ZUCCARO: And there's there's three.

ZUCCARO: Of you and your director and.

ZUCCARO: There's three of us direct reports, and.

ZUCCARO: We oversee 40.

ZUCCARO: Different, 40 different maintenance locations. And we have I was like 120 mechanics and you have $63 million worth of fleet vehicles.

ZUCCARO: That you're responsible for. My am I. So that was my intro.

ZUCCARO: And sure.

ZUCCARO: Enough.

ZUCCARO: I had all that and.

ZUCCARO: They allowed me to operate as if I was the director of Fleet.

ZUCCARO: Because I was. And in a way we.

ZUCCARO: Went in and it was it was amazing experience.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And that was roughly 2019 through 2020. Roughly.

ZUCCARO: Yep.

ZUCCARO: It was a year long program.

SPRAGUE: Okay. We're going to quickstep back and finish out the the group commander thing here. Tell me a little bit about because you had mentioned in passing and I caught it something that was during as you're well, you were in command, something you went to some nuclear training and you had mentioned some new killer.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I did get.

ZUCCARO: I did get some training on the nuclear enterprise because.

ZUCCARO: In Alaska.

ZUCCARO: We did the 33, ten missions. That's in the Pacific mission sets. And then at the air operations center, we did our homeland defense and then in or out in the NorthCom mission says. But I had never been introduced into the StratCom mission set, which most tanker units that are located in the Conus have a nuclear support role in that in the StratCom mission. So when I became that squadron commander, that was my first introduction into the StratCom mission said. So I had a large learning curve to overcome because everybody else been doing it, you know, their whole career. And it's pretty complicated. Mission set, pretty demanding. Very important.

ZUCCARO: And. So I did go to some schooling at Kirkland to kind of help with that.

ZUCCARO: And as a group commander, the reason I didn't want to take that fellowship was because once every five years we have a nuclear operational readiness inspection.

ZUCCARO: That's a really big deal.

ZUCCARO: It's where you get looked at to see whether your can do your new mission. And so I had.

ZUCCARO: To start a little bit of the training for the fellowship. As operational group commander.

ZUCCARO: A few weeks. But then I came back and did the inspection.

ZUCCARO: And really the inspections important.

ZUCCARO: But the year prior, the year and a half prior, where you're really making sure that everybody's prepped and in proficient as they can be in that mission set is the important part. And I didn't want to be gone that year and then come back.

ZUCCARO: Out and just wouldn't be right.

SPRAGUE: And that was probably why you received the Nuclear deterrence operation Service Medal.

ZUCCARO: Maybe anybody who's anybody who's in.

ZUCCARO: This mission set will get that.

SPRAGUE: Okay. I was just curious. I was trying to understand where that came from.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Nothing special.

ZUCCARO: To me. That's a that's an I mean, it is special to me.

ZUCCARO: But it's when you're in that mission. So, of course. And we passed the we passed the inspection, which is a big deal.

SPRAGUE: What? So we get forward to 2019, 2020. You've completed your Secretary of Defense Executive Fellowship. Mm hmm. With Kwak. Mm hmm. You attend a Darden School of Graduate Business in Charlottesville. That was the.

ZUCCARO: That was at the beginning of your fellowship. Yup.

SPRAGUE: Yup. And then tell me about bring me up to 2020, September 12th of 2020 and becoming a wing commander.

ZUCCARO: So when I left here, the follow on.

ZUCCARO: Thought was that I would come back and compete for the wing commander position and then current wing commander at the time. That matched up with when he thought he would be retiring. And during my fellowship year, his plans changed. He felt that he wanted to stay on longer. And so when I asked him, you know, where would I.

ZUCCARO: Fit back into the wing.

ZUCCARO: There really wasn't a spot. So I had started the Och, I'm going to go back again to go into the civilian world and started making those arrangements. Unfortunately, he then was asked to retire and the position came open.

ZUCCARO: So I was really pretty close to mentally. Once you kind of separate, go down there, go down that pathway. It was about as close to two. I can't turn this around mentally as I could have gotten, but I really felt, yeah, when the plans changed the first time was like, but I still have.

ZUCCARO: Service left in me.

ZUCCARO: And it was really difficult.

ZUCCARO: To then say, Oh, okay, well, I guess, you know, I guess time's up. And and going through that emotional wickets. So to come back and I was like.

ZUCCARO: Well I still I still feel.

ZUCCARO: Like I have service in me. So I put my name in to compete for that for the wing commander position and.

ZUCCARO: And got it. And I'm really.

ZUCCARO: Really glad that I did because this is I mean, it is a role of a lifetime. It's it's a position that very few people get to command a flying wing during wartime operation in which global war on terror or preparing for whatever is coming in the Pacific. I mean, it's just a yeah, it's a job of a lifetime and in to have missed that or forgone it now for other other reasons I'm really glad that I came back and and I it's very rewarding. It's very fulfilling. It's very, very challenging where you're out.

ZUCCARO: But I but I was glad to have been able to compete for it.

SPRAGUE: I would imagine that competition was pretty intense for the the wing position. Yeah, I would imagine it would be it's sought after I would imagine, to very sought. And you are the first female wing commander here. Yeah. Yes. Wing. Tell me a little bit. You had mentioned it in the pre-interview and I'm curious of about the role of both being the wing commander and the base commander, if I understand. You correctly.

ZUCCARO: So in the Air Force construct.

ZUCCARO: Particularly on a base that has one mission, you're having your base commander and your flying operations.

ZUCCARO: Commander, the wing commander. So different.

ZUCCARO: Services will do it.

ZUCCARO: Differently and actually even different Air Force bases.

ZUCCARO: If they have multiple missions going on, they might have multiple wings. And then a base commander and you'll.

ZUCCARO: Have multiple wing commanders. But here where.

ZUCCARO: 99 acres, which.

ZUCCARO: Is fairly small, we have one.

ZUCCARO: Flying mission instead of multiple types of aircraft. So the wing commander has his base flying, you know, all all of the roles.

SPRAGUE: You had mentioned that. You said it believe it's kind of like being a mayor of a small town. A little bit maybe.

ZUCCARO: It is. So here's the 128.

ZUCCARO: We have roughly 900 people. Just under 900 people. But two thirds of those are your DC is your drill status Guardsmen. So they have civilian jobs as their full time jobs and they come out for their drills and other training. So roughly 300 full timers run the base for the preponderance of the time. But with that, we have to run the base. You know, we have to do all the infrastructure.

ZUCCARO: We have to do.

ZUCCARO: All the all the maintenance. We have to do all the h.r. We have do the medical that's required for the military.

ZUCCARO: So it takes a lot and it.

ZUCCARO: Is like a little it.

ZUCCARO: Is a small town.

SPRAGUE: Do you think in your opinion, as you know that mixture of one third's two thirds drilling active or whatever you want to call it full time, Do you think in general that that's a work it's a working, a work model that works for the military or or would it be ideally all drilling or all active or so?

ZUCCARO: I think it's important.

ZUCCARO: The US needs a military desire as a military that's for many more soldiers and airmen and sailors than they can elect to pay full time.

ZUCCARO: So to get if you didn't have the Guard and.

ZUCCARO: Reserve and we were all full time, we'd be a lot more expensive. And so the construct of having a strategic reserve, which is how they used to talk about us, is, is a great setup because it allows you to, to expand and contract and and financially, the guard is far more economical than than having a full.

ZUCCARO: Active duty force.

ZUCCARO: The other benefit that you get is you're part timers.

ZUCCARO: They're out there in the.

ZUCCARO: Civilian world gaining civilian experiences where you're active duty, they're full time military. So all that civilian experience, then we pull back into our operations and we benefit greatly from our members that have.

ZUCCARO: Outside civilian experience. So I do think it's a good construct.

ZUCCARO: I think the way we've been used for global war on terrorism and in some of the pacing now is I my concern would be that we don't have much of a reserve left and that we're so operational that there just isn't any any in the background. And I think sometimes people think that there's this huge reserve when.

ZUCCARO: There isn't.

SPRAGUE: Time. In terms of. Things that have happened recently as the wing commander. What what was the was there any response you had mentioned in one of your interviews in terms of did you have any deployments for Covid 19?

ZUCCARO: Oh, yeah. Half our forces.

ZUCCARO: Were our airmen were deployed many, many, many days, some some years. We also had the civil unrest that we supported both for Milwaukee and Kenosha. And those were very significant and significant for our members who are all wrestling in their civilian and military lives with, you know, how what's going to happen, what do we need to do to get our communities, our local communities back to cohesive?

ZUCCARO: You know, those are those were significant and Covid was significant. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about meeting president. Biden at their at the field here.

ZUCCARO: So I think in the.

ZUCCARO: First year I was here, first year and a half I was here. We had something like eight presidential visits. So Trump, Pence, Biden, Harris.

ZUCCARO: You know, since come through here, they've all come through multiple times and.

ZUCCARO: Certainly isn't routine, but there is a routine to it. And so I you know, my biggest concern is this. Typically, please don't trip on the carpet. Please don't slip on the ice.

ZUCCARO: Please, please get down that jetway safely. That's that's what's running through my mind during those.

SPRAGUE: Oh, yeah. It's interesting in looking at what you've done, you have like a an outreach. You've mentioned this in some of your interviews to the surrounding community. Tell me about that a little bit about.

ZUCCARO: We are trying very hard.

ZUCCARO: To be just known in our own local community, which is it sounds like well, of course you are known, but we're we're really not as familiar to people as we'd like.

ZUCCARO: To be. So I think because.

ZUCCARO: Wisconsin doesn't have an active duty base, people who are familiar with the military typically are people who have military in their family.

ZUCCARO: Or somebody close to them that they know. So there's a lot of supporters of the.

ZUCCARO: Military in Wisconsin. It's a huge support network for the military.

ZUCCARO: But they have very limited knowledge.

ZUCCARO: On who their local military is. And so the 128 is the hometown Air Force Two in Milwaukee. We're the Brewer city tankers.

ZUCCARO: So if you go out on the street and.

ZUCCARO: Pull ten, people would be lucky to get one that knows what the 128 is where we are. And so we're really trying hard to get out there and say, hey, you know, we're here, we're in your local community, we work amongst you. And and this is who we are.

SPRAGUE: Tell me a little bit about the city tanker's quote, unquote. Yeah. And the hockey team, too. I'm interested in that.

ZUCCARO: Oh, well, we do. We do have members that go and compete.

ZUCCARO: We have a bowling.

ZUCCARO: Team that goes and competes, and.

ZUCCARO: Then we have a hockey team mostly just in that Air Force.

ZUCCARO: Tournaments. But we just kind of latched on to the Brew City.

ZUCCARO: And used it. And we call ourselves the Blue City Tankers.

ZUCCARO: We're also known out there as Milwaukee. A lot of people.

ZUCCARO: Refer to us as Milwaukee, which is great. It's just a way to kind of help brand and and create. It's create that team.

SPRAGUE: Some of the events that you've held that are interesting. Tell me about the flight to the North Pole event.

ZUCCARO: Mm hmm. It's a little bit. So as part of the outreach and and just part of doing things that are our members.

ZUCCARO: Connect to the community and to to give back to our local community. There's an organization called Flight to the North Pole that brings children with.

ZUCCARO: Typically cancer.

ZUCCARO: But other types of illnesses. And through that organization they use the the tanker will taxi away from the airport and to the signature hangar most of the time, and they create a Christmas environment. That's that's one we like doing.

ZUCCARO: We also have scout days.

ZUCCARO: This year we brought out BSA's scouts and Girl Scouts both.

ZUCCARO: This year and last year.

ZUCCARO: The BSA Scouts, we got over 100 their aviation merit badge. And for the Girl Scouts, they got their cyber badges. The year before, we had a bunch of Cub Scouts and BSA Scouts, and they got a whole slew of different badges and requirements.

ZUCCARO: That they needed. Bring the Civil Air Patrol out.

ZUCCARO: We try and bring business leaders out. We have mayor out in the city, executor out this year.

ZUCCARO: Executive sorry, the city executive and. Crowley Right. Yeah. So and we're in the schools. And so for us, where there's a fine line between familiarity.

ZUCCARO: And recruiting and we definitely do recruit because we have to do that so that we can bring more people in as members and and be mission relevant. But that's not all of why we're in the community. And I and I try and make that really clear is because we want to be known as part of the community. And that's of your minority part. Mm hmm.

ZUCCARO: And as guard bases go. As you go through time, they they always look.

ZUCCARO: To see, you know, what bases are relevant and what aren't. And it really matters whether you. Our community considers you a relevant part of their community. And so I think it's very important for those who live and work around us to to know that that's part of the reason why we're here is because our community wants us here.

SPRAGUE: Tell me a little bit about what your if you could encapsulated in 30s or less. What what is your leadership philosophy, if you had one. What what would you what would you grill it down to?

ZUCCARO: It's pretty simple for me is participation. It's just like.

ZUCCARO: I tell people, it's.

ZUCCARO: Really pretty simple. Yeah, you need to show.

ZUCCARO: Up and and you need to participate. And when you do.

ZUCCARO: That with with no other agenda in mind, but whatever the mission is for then for the day or or task, then opportunities open and teams are built and things get done that you never even knew you could get done. And it really.

ZUCCARO: Is whatever your.

ZUCCARO: Got in front of you to do, you just do that to your best ability. And then and then things happen from there. So it's it's not much of a philosophy.

ZUCCARO: But it in that really.

ZUCCARO: For me in my career, when I look back and I think, you know, how on earth did I end up here Because it wasn't like I came in as a lieutenant and said, someday I'm going to be the wing.

ZUCCARO: Commander.

ZUCCARO: You know, I didn't have this five, ten, 15 year goal to get to this position. I literally said, I want to be a pilot and then I want to be a military pilot. And in I would start and career in ops and do mission planning. And then they'd say, Oh, she's a really good planner.

ZUCCARO: Put her in the exercise and then, Oh, she's really good planner at the.

ZUCCARO: Exercise, put her in it, you.

ZUCCARO: Know, And, and so I found for me.

ZUCCARO: If I showed up and I did to the best of my ability, then I opportunities would open and and I would take them.

SPRAGUE: How do you think if they have how have things shifted from when you entered the service in the mid-nineties as a woman leader, as an officer to today, do you think? Tell me about that.

ZUCCARO: Yeah, I, I think a lot of things have happened. Society has shifted.

ZUCCARO: So it's not unusual to have women in the workplace for sure, but women in all sorts of facets. So the the young men, they're just used to having women around. When I came in in the 90s, they weren't used to having female pilots around.

ZUCCARO: It was unusual. Still, it's not so unusual now. And so society.

ZUCCARO: Has helped that and take a lot of those barriers down. But the young women.

ZUCCARO: They're they're great.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Where my generation and in they respect my generation that just came put your nose down and tried to work with the system that was there. And the women now are really taking a look at the system and saying, okay.

ZUCCARO: You know, you're.

ZUCCARO: Going to we're going to need to change things so that more people can operate in your system and the.

ZUCCARO: System, I should say. And so that means.

ZUCCARO: You know, changing things.

ZUCCARO: Slowly, sometimes.

ZUCCARO: Quickly, sometimes. Pregnancy regulations have changed, particularly for flying to make it more the women's woman's choice than than anybody else's. We're trying to do changes for uniforms so that they actually fit right. And that's really important not just for appearances, but for things like body armor.

ZUCCARO: Why why is.

ZUCCARO: The young lady going out with body armor that doesn't fit her?

ZUCCARO: That's not right. You know, changing things like airplane settings. Yeah.

ZUCCARO: They did this great study that determined that it took the average male size for 1960s and they've created all these airplanes with that height.

ZUCCARO: Well, that excludes people who are.

ZUCCARO: Too tall and too short. Short according to that which is on the short side. A lot of your women and Asian Hispanic cultures have shorter people.

ZUCCARO: Will okay. So they can't be pilots? Well, in the Air Force, who are your leaders? Primarily pilots by design. So if you've already narrowed.

ZUCCARO: Your pool from the get go.

ZUCCARO: You can't expect somehow to have.

ZUCCARO: This well-rounded leadership later.

ZUCCARO: On because you've already.

ZUCCARO: Excluded them. And and so the women initiative team for the Air Force has really done some amazing work just exposing some of these things and saying it's nobody's fault, but let's not keep doing it.

ZUCCARO: And so I'm really I'm really proud of.

ZUCCARO: The younger generation who who is just really looking at things from a better. From a position where they can affect things more.

SPRAGUE: How do you think in terms of over that same time frame? The Air Force as a workplace in terms of sexual harassment, how amnesty, how how things change? Do they not change? What was your experience of that?

ZUCCARO: We're definitely more aware of it.

ZUCCARO: And I think that the training that we do to recognize we're a slice of society, right? Military is no different than civilian world when it comes to their nefarious people. And and and they permeate in every organization. But recognizing that and then recognizing when you've created an environment that somebody can be successful because you've been lax or you've.

ZUCCARO: Ignored.

ZUCCARO: That your environment actually allows somebody nefarious to operate and that can be sexual harassment, that can be any of your nefarious behaviors. If you're if you're unwilling to look at your environment for what it is and what it allows, then you're going to have those deviant behaviors.

ZUCCARO: And you cannot.

ZUCCARO: Stop all deviant behaviors. But you can.

ZUCCARO: Try. And I and I think we're doing.

ZUCCARO: Way better at trying.

ZUCCARO: And more people.

ZUCCARO: Are trying because we're saying, hey.

ZUCCARO: This isn't.

ZUCCARO: You know, a leader can't control everything. It takes the whole entire wing to say, we're going to watch what we're we're going to watch for it and we're going to try and create an environment where it does, where it's hard for it to occur.

SPRAGUE: You can. Tell me about what where you see your future in the military if you if you would, or just conjecture or projections or what are your thoughts?

ZUCCARO: I still have some.

ZUCCARO: Service left in me.

ZUCCARO: And I.

ZUCCARO: Think there will be.

ZUCCARO: At least another.

ZUCCARO: Chapter. I don't know how long that chapter will be.

ZUCCARO: But I, I think there will be another chapter where I can continue to serve.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And. I always ask this question, How do you think your life would be different if you hadn't served, you had enjoyed you hadn't raised your right hand, swore the oath.

ZUCCARO: So when I say I came in.

ZUCCARO: I wanted to be a pilot. That was primarily the motivator mode, motivator.

ZUCCARO: Motivation. Thank you. But somewhere along.

ZUCCARO: That line, that service grew in me. I. I am way more service oriented as a colonel than I was as a lieutenant. And I don't know.

ZUCCARO: If people helped grow.

ZUCCARO: That or the mission help grow, but the whole experience helped grow that understanding and fulfillment from serving. And so I think if I had been in the civilian sector or even if I maybe had been a part timer instead of a full timer, it might not have grown as strong.

ZUCCARO: And I'm thankful.

ZUCCARO: For that because I think it's I certainly could go on the outside.

ZUCCARO: And make a.

ZUCCARO: Lot more money at this.

ZUCCARO: Point in my career and in other things, but I don't think it would be near as fulfilling.

SPRAGUE: So what motivated you to do this interview?

ZUCCARO: Somebody asked me yesterday and I think it is selfishly, I met a.

ZUCCARO: Phase where I'm going back and capturing my father's experiences because he's older and my mother's and my families. And we have tried to do that some with my grandfather.

ZUCCARO: And it is hard. It is.

ZUCCARO: The older they get, the harder it is to really capture.

ZUCCARO: And so I'm hopeful that.

ZUCCARO: You know, maybe someday my grandchildren.

ZUCCARO: Will be able to see this and.

ZUCCARO: And have some sort of sense.

ZUCCARO: Of who, you know, who I was and what I did. And so there's a selfish motive.

SPRAGUE: Did we miss anything that you'd like to cover?

ZUCCARO: Well, we really did cover a lot. Now, I think if you had asked me, you.

ZUCCARO: Know, what are you proud of over your your span of service? And when I talk to the younger generation of women, they're thankful that we we and the generation before me made it through this system and and made it so that they can change the system a little bit more than than we did.

ZUCCARO: Probably a lot more than than we did. So I'm proud to have, I think.

ZUCCARO: Probably made a pathway for for change. I'm proud to be a mother.

ZUCCARO: And part of the reason I think probably.

ZUCCARO: That I continued to serve was to be an example to say that you can do this. You know, it's.

ZUCCARO: Not easy to be a mom.

ZUCCARO: And be a commander and be a pilot. And but nothing.

ZUCCARO: Was really easy. And and truthfully, I think as a society.

ZUCCARO: There's a lot of dual.

ZUCCARO: Working households now. Right. And so it's not just the military that needs to figure out how is.

ZUCCARO: It we're going to have dual working households. I think.

ZUCCARO: Corporate needs to figure that out.

ZUCCARO: Too. So to be to be a mom in the military and a pilot and commander, I think is an important to say. Yes. You know, they talk about people do what they see. So maybe in.

ZUCCARO: Some small way that's played a part in somebody else's pathway.

SPRAGUE: Anything else that you'd like to talk about?

ZUCCARO: No, I think we've covered a lot.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you for interviewing with us.

ZUCCARO: Well, thank you for spending the last few.

ZUCCARO: Hours with me. Okay. Yeah. I'm fallen asleep yet?

SPRAGUE: No. Okay. This concludes the interview.

[Interview Ends]