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 is being 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. Okay, Colonel. Where did you grow up?

ZUCCARO: I grew up in Northern Virginia. Fairfax Station. It's about 20 miles outside of Washington 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, I had two older siblings, and I was born and raised through high 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 initially got you thinking about joining the military?

ZUCCARO: It began more so with what got me thinking about, uh, flying. So I started working various jobs for neighbors and such at about ten years old and did that all through middle school and high school. 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 could jump out of an airplane. I wanted to skydive. [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: When you were how old?

ZUCCARO: 14.

SPRAGUE: 14. Oh, my God.

ZUCCARO: [Laughing] So I said, "Hey, why don't you take me to the airport. I know how much skydiving costs and I have enough money, and I'd like to do that." And he responded with, "Let's split the cost of flying lessons, and you don't jump out of an airplane until after college." [Both laugh] And I thought about it and I said, "Well, that's a pretty good deal." So I took that deal and 00:02:00started flying lessons.

SPRAGUE: What aircraft did you learn on?

ZUCCARO: A Cessna 152?

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: A typical trainer out at Manassas Airport. That's just in Northern Virginia as well, which is a pretty busy area to learn to fly in, because you have Dulles and National and Baltimore airspace and Richmond airspace. So, um, but it was Manassas where I initially did my flight training.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. Were you, at that point, you were just thinking about flying?

ZUCCARO: Yep. Yep. So my father was prior military, he was a Navy F-8 pilot on carriers. And so I was exposed to military for sure, through him. Um, and then as I got through high school, I must've started thinking about it, or maybe my father did, because he took me to the West Virginia Air National Guard unit. And 00:03:00I actually walked around there and got a tour when I was probably a junior or a senior in high school, and that's where I actually learned about the Guard program. So he helped me discover different avenues in the military besides active duty.

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

ZUCCARO: Fred [Azid??] Page.

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

ZUCCARO: So, yes. So my grandfather served in the Korean War, and my other grandfather was a little bit too old for World War Two, but he was a maintenance supervisor at United Airlines at the time, and the military actually brought him in as a civilian with a couple other airline executives. And he served in the military as a civilian doing various set-ups in the Pacific.

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

ZUCCARO: Certainly exposed to it. Yes.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Um, so what, when did and this is kind of, a question, did 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 and I went through solo and got pretty close to getting my license. But then I went off to college and [both laughing] right when I should have come home and finished off that license, I didn't. So actually, it was when I got selected for pilot training and finished pilot training was officially the first license. And then I went back and added on the single-engine add-on.

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

ZUCCARO: Absolutely. Yeah, because there's a lot of people who think they're 00:05:00going to like flying, but you really have to go out and do it to see if it's what you really thought it was going to be. So certainly that early experience and then soloing and going through the cross-countries and the solo cross-countries, and really knowing that, yes, that being in an aircraft is where I want to be.

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

ZUCCARO: [Laughs] That's right.

SPRAGUE: Is that a--

ZUCCARO: And I still haven't skydived all these years.

SPRAGUE: No static line, no halo maybe?

ZUCCARO: Oh, I've done bungee cord jumping and some stuff, and at this point, it sounds silly, but I don't want to wreck my knees. [Laughs] 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. Um, was a typical teenager who just wanted to get out and see the world. Uh, and so I tried to go as far away from 00:06:00home as I could. Because I was a bit of a pill as a teenager, [laughs] and as far away from home as I could get 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. Um, focusing on that. So I, and I love Tucson, but Tucson got really, really hot in the summer. Surprise. And so in the summertimes, I went and worked at Yellowstone National Park. Also 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?

ZUCCARO: Uh, the concessionaires.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So I was always 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 at Denali National Park. And I thought to myself, well, before I go off and, you know, do the real adulting work, I want to spend just one more, well I want to spend a winter in Alaska, because it's different in the summertime than the wintertime, obviously. So my intention was to stay one winter in Fairbanks and then come back and get a real job and go on from there. So I did spend that winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I was waiting tables at the Country Western Bar. And one of my very first customers was a Guard pilot with the 168th. And I started talking to him and he's like, "Well, wait a second. You're, you know, you're almost finished up on your private pilot's license, you 00:08:00have a college education, you don't have an arrest record, and you like Alaska. You should come apply to our pilot position." 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 Guard unit and I'd done a year at ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps] at University of Arizona too. 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, you would be very competitive for a position." So I put my application in with 168th Air Refueling Wing at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. And that process took, uh, it took quite a while. So in the meantime, I went from waiting tables to investing in a local cheesesteak restaurant [laughs] and working as a part owner in the cheesesteak restaurant. In the meantime, I did get selected for the pilot position as an alternate. Uh, and so I really 00:09:00didn't know the timeline of when that or if that would come to fruition. So, um, got the restaurant going, 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 actually sent me off to training. Um, so I worked for the restaurant and that cost us about as much as a master's degree, took about as long as a master's degree. And I learned far more than any master's degree could ever teach you [laughs] about small business and restaurant businesses.

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

ZUCCARO: Fairbanks.

SPRAGUE: Fairbanks.

ZUCCARO: Right downtown Fairbanks.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And we had the best cheesesteaks anywhere. We had, at the peak, we had three different locations. We had over 100 employees. We grossed a million in 00:10:00our first year, not netted, but we did gross, and really-- It was with two brothers, and one brother and I had the vision to franchise 'cause there really isn't a good cheesesteak, still, franchise out there. And the other brother wanted a mom and pop restaurant. And really we couldn't reconcile the two different visions. But it was a fantastic experience. We had full delivery service to the Army base, which was right there. And, um, I really enjoyed it. It was hard, hard work.

SPRAGUE: And what was the name of the restaurant, or chain?

ZUCCARO: The Chuck Wagon.

SPRAGUE: The Chuck Wagon. Okay, nice.

ZUCCARO: [Laughing] Yup. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPRAGUE: And you were part owner?

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm. Yep.

SPRAGUE: Or one of the owners? Okay.

ZUCCARO: I was about, 20, 21, was young. At one point I was the youngest employee as an owner. [Laughs]

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

ZUCCARO: The Alaska Air National Guard.

SPRAGUE: Alaska Air National Guard. Sorry.

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: Um, tell me about, you know, getting into the military, how that process worked for you.

ZUCCARO: It, uh, [laughing] it's a bureaucracy 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 that time was actually paperwork, and filled it out. And I sat at somebody's desk. And in the meantime, they'd switched to a computer program, and so, I mean, this is like 10, 11 months that goes by, and I'm like, you know, what's going on? And finally, somebody found the paperwork that was sitting on somebody's desk, and they're like, you need to redo your security clearance paperwork, which is really difficult. I mean, it's really difficult. So, if you can imagine, at that point, actually, I had gone and stayed with my parents for about a month who were living in Hawaii. So I went to 00:12:00the Hawaiian National Guard and said, "Do you have these computers where I can enter my security clearance information?" So the Hawaiian Guard was really good to me, and I sat down and got that paperwork reentered. But, you know, those type of things take months. I mean, that was probably a ten-month delay there. So in the meantime, you know, I'd had the restaurant, and even at the very end of it, we had declared the bankruptcy, or I had actually gotten out of 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. And at that time, the bars could be open 22 hours a day. You could pick any two hours to close 'em. And this bar closed from 8 to 10 in the morning. So I [both laughing] would work the 8 at 9 shift to the 5 a.m., hit all the shift workers after work. 00:13:00And 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 to, he showed up at about 10 o'clock in the morning. [Laughing] And I did my interview with him. And that was, that security clearance, my point being, is a lengthy, lengthy process. But that finally all made it through the wickets. And I eventually got hired and got to go to training.

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

ZUCCARO: So it, because it was a pilot position, before they commissioned you in the Guard, at least at that time, they would send you to a pre-screening course. And, so in December of, must have been '96, maybe? I went to Hondo, which is in Texas outside of Lackland, and did the pre-screening. Funny thing there is 00:14:00you're-- I didn't have any military experience whatsoever. I'm a straight civilian. So they issue me a flight suit and an officer's hat with no rank. [Laughs] And they said, "Go to this pre-screening course." And so now that I'm in the military, I understand, you know, the systems and the 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? And anyways, I make my way down to Hondo and Lackland is where we stayed and got in with the other people in pre-screening, who most of them had some sort of military 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 those things. So, and really it's pretty high pressure because you got to make 00:15:00it through this pre-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. But I did, but it was difficult not having any prior experience.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. Hondo is spelled how?

ZUCCARO: H-O-N-D-O, Hondo.

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

ZUCCARO: It was a little airfield.

SPRAGUE: Okay. No problem.

ZUCCARO: Yeah, it's not a military base. It was an ox field that they used, so we would bus about 45 minutes from Lackland to Hondo, and then we'd 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 an I.D. that said I was an E-5.

SPRAGUE: Oh, okay.

ZUCCARO: Even though I had no you know, that was just the entry-level pre-officer. And away, you go. So your commissioning was predicated on you getting through this screening. So had I not made it through the screening, I would have been escorted--not escorted, but that would have been the end of my military pilot career. Now, would they have kept me in a non-flying position? I'd have to apply and go from there, but probably. [Laughs]

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

ZUCCARO: Just being really nervous about whether to salute or not. And Lackland has a lot of foreign military there, going to different, various schools and such. So just being so confused on, am I supposed to salute somebody? Am I not supposed to salute somebody? And just really everything from, this is pre-mobile 00:17:00phones, right? So what's a DSN [Defense Service Network] line? What do you mean I can-- you know, long-distance calls to Alaska cost money. And so working with the other prior military who knew "Hey, if you call on the DSN line to the operator, they will connect--" I'm like, "What!? That's a thing?" [Laughing]

SPRAGUE: Yup.

ZUCCARO: And so all those little things now that they don't even think twice about, back then, it was all new discovery. And we were flying the T-3 at that time, and the T-3 was a perfectly good airplane. But then the military, in my opinion, they put a much bigger engine into it. And that caused some problems. It caused some hydraulic problems. Hydraulic fluid would lock up and then the engine would seize. And they had problems at the Academy particularly, and they unfortunately had a couple of deaths. So the program, you know, when I came into 00:18:00the 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. I think that was the reason. Um, so in that regard, 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? So that was one concern. But it was a fantastic program because that airplane 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 pre-screening program. So going into pilot training, you already had at least a 00:19:00small sense of what it was like to be upside down, and how to pull a G [G-Force], and those types of things. So I was very grateful to have gotten to do it.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. Tell me a little bit about, you get through screening.

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: Um, and then to me, it looked like you went to go get your commission.

ZUCCARO: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Tell me a little bit about that program, please.

ZUCCARO: [Laughing] So they put you through the pre-screening and then they send you to get commissioned. And that was AMS [Academy of Military Science], so the Guard at that time used AMS as a commissioning source. Which AMS was really designed to take somebody who is an enlisted top performer, 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. So there was a lot of focus 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? It was not a great 00:20:00program to make a civilian into an officer. [Both laugh] So for the second time, I show up at that AMS, and I think I was like one of two civilians, one of two or three civilians [laughing] 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 stomp is, you know, all these nuanced military things. They're, because they're the cream of the crop. You know, they're the high-performing staff sergeants and master sergeants for the most part. So that was interesting. That was a steep learning curve. And I was rooming with a lady who was as old as you could possibly be and be commissioned. Like, if she'd gone to another commissioning a week later, she wouldn't have gotten commissioned. And she was highly intelligent. She worked on, like, the Air Force's only boat as an Intel [Intelligence] officer, analyst, of some sort. 00:21:00And she really helped me with uniforms and some of that little stuff. But it was a good compliment because where she got stuck, was, she would overthink all these tests. I mean, these are not scholarly tests that they're trying to give us. And she would just overthink all of them and dicker about the answers. 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. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And that was out of Tennessee?

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: Maybe Tyson National Guard Base?

ZUCCARO: McGhee-Tyson.

SPRAGUE: McGhee-Tyson. Sure. Yeah.

ZUCCARO: I did get really sick in the middle of it. And you don't wanna, you don't wanna miss any of it. And I had a fever and an earache, and I kept falling asleep in lectures, and they pulled me out, and they were like, "You're going to 00:22:00get 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, [laughing] "Oh, my word, yes, [laughing] you're really sick." And so I got 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 me back. And so I took my antibiotics and went out in the field and did the field exercise and made it out of there. [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: Good. Good.

ZUCCARO: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So, um, you get commissioned.

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: Uh, where did you go to next?

ZUCCARO: So, let's see. Right before I got commissioned, I actually got married.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And I went to AMS for the "honeymoon". My husband went to Italy [laughs] for that portion of it, which was fortunate for him. So after that, I 00:23:00went back up to Alaska.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And waited to go to pilot training. But while I was waiting to go to pilot training, my husband got reassigned to Tucson, ironically, back to Tucson, because he was an A-10 pilot, so that's where their RTU [Returned to Unit] is.

ZUCCARO: So we moved out of Alaska to Tucson. He set up a household in Tucson. And then pretty shortly after that, I went on to Columbus, Mississippi.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

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

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

ZUCCARO: [Laughs] So my mother is from Mississippi and my grandfather was still alive and he lived in Mississippi. And my mother had actually gone to MSCW, 00:24:00Mississippi State College for Women, which is now the new Mississippi University for Women, in Columbus, Mississippi. So--

SPRAGUE: Right where you, yeah.

ZUCCARO: So it was it was kind of neat to have some ties there. And my grandfather had always said, he goes, "There's always airplanes, there's Air Force airplanes flying over my farm." Like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. And later on in the training, we were doing low-level routes and one of the low-level routes, 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. [Laughs] So he was right, that the Air Force planes always flew over his barn. So the whole time I was at Columbus, Mississippi, every time he saw an airplane, he said, "I saw you flying today!" [Both laugh] I said, "Did you, now?" So I enjoyed being in Columbus, I really did.

SPRAGUE: And that was with the 14th Flying Training Wing, does that sound right? Maybe?

ZUCCARO: Yep, yep.

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-1s and they had been there a little bit. So I flew the T-37 and the T-1.

SPRAGUE: Stupid question. So you were out of the Alaska National Guard, the 168th.

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: Did you acquire the association with the KC-135 at that point? Or how does that work?

ZUCCARO: So when you joined a Guard unit, you join that unit. So I knew going into pilot training that I would come back to the KC-135. Whereas if you were in active duty, you go to pilot training, and then dependent on how you rank in your pilot training class determines what aircraft you go to.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah, 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 could be there all day.

SPRAGUE: Oh, the highlight, the highlights!

ZUCCARO: [Laughing] It was difficult. And yeah, it was absolutely difficult. I learned some real lessons there, which I try and carry forward, about. Probably the biggest takeaway is different learning styles. And so, as I look back on my training and where things kind of went awry, which they did for a while, I noticed that particularly for women, we talk a lot. We talk a lot more than men do. It's just a fact. And we ask a lot more questions than men do. And when you do that at that time, in that environment, it is perceived as you don't know 00:27:00what you're doing, and you're unsure, and you're not confident. And once you head down that pathway, it's very difficult. It's difficult for you to not perceive yourself as, "Maybe I'm not getting this," and it's difficult for others around you. So I was fortunate. I kept at it. I had difficulties in the 37s with a couple check rides. And what helped me more than anything was getting out of the T-37s and into the T-1, because in the T-1, you fly with your other classmates. And so, I was like "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-1, [laughs] 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, 00:28:00none of us are perfect. And that really was a turning point for me to say, "Okay, I'm on par." I'm not portraying what I need to portray, which is the confidence to make sure that other people are confident in me. And I really had to change how I studied, and ask questions, and who I ask questions of. What I take away at this point in my career, and I try really, really hard to get other people to consider, is learning styles. Like it's because somebody is asking questions does not necessarily mean 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 00:29:00it's going to happen before they get in the aircraft, and men are a little more apt to just step in and make it up as they go. And neither one is right or 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? 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: Did you find there was, 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, and it's been, you know, I was kind of right on the edge where women were finally starting to come into the flying 00:30:00career a little bit more. So it was set up definitely for men. 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 those existing rules. And kind of the story I just relayed was, okay, I'm not going to ask my flight instructor questions because he's going to 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. Which is too bad, right? Because what's an instructor there for? [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: Exactly.

ZUCCARO: So in that regard, did I encounter any blatant? I wouldn't say blatant. And there are always episodes, you know, and usually, that's a certain person. 00:31:00Yeah. That's how that's how I'd describe it.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. So tell me about becoming qualified later on, next on the KC-135.

ZUCCARO: Okay. Oh, well, one thing.

SPRAGUE: Oh, what did I miss?

ZUCCARO: Nope, no. For the pilot training, I did go through with my maiden name. I did not change it because my husband was in the military as well, and a little bit about ten years older than me. So, I knew there would be people there that knew him, so I intentionally 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 actually a good friend of his and [laughs] he never knew that I was his wife, which was great. And then there was another person there. There's two schools of thoughts on my husband, you either liked him or you didn't. [Both laughing] And there was 00:32:00another person there who was like one of the commanders who didn't like him. So, that plan, I was really happy to get out knowing that, you know, this was me doing this. And whichever way it would have ended up, it ended up going the way I wanted it to. But there was no there was never any influence from him.

SPRAGUE: For the record, would you be okay with mentioning your maiden name at that time?

ZUCCARO: Yeah, yeah. So like my aeronautical order that's on the wall is Lieutenant Adria Page.

SPRAGUE: Page, P-A-G-E? Okay, cool.

ZUCCARO: Yep. Yeah. So I kept my maiden name for a while, but I was glad to do it.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

ZUCCARO: And so that might be one difference too, I don't know any male that went to pilot training that was concerned about anybody knowing his wife. [Laughing] So. But that was something I, you know.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Um, okay. So it looks like the next thing that happened is you 00:33:00went to get actually qualified for KC-135s?

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

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And it wasn't too long, but it was enough to mess up the orders, which was aggravating. [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: Okay, if you want to share that, that would be great. If not, that's okay too.

ZUCCARO: And I'm trying to remember if I went to survival school, I think I might have gone to survival school after pilot training, and then to 135 school.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So--

ZUCCARO: But honest to goodness, I can't remember. Um, uh, so after pilot training, we had all the families there. We did the reenactment of the wedding that never happened because we actually eloped. So we had this lovely antebellum home, and we had all the families there and we did this really nice ceremony. And then I did, I must have gone to Oklahoma from there. I think I went right to 135 school, honestly, to Altus, Oklahoma.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

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

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, um, it's got a real school flavor to it. Uh, military school. A little different than the other ones. I don't know. [Laughs] I had a perfectly good 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 INS [inertial navigation system] and got rid-- and GPS [global positioning system] and, and got rid of the navigator. So when I came in, the KC-135 had a 4, well, 5-person crew. You had an AC [Aircraft Commander], a copilot, a navigator, and a boom operator. And then if you're traveling, you'd have traveling crew chiefs. So I learned all the 00:35:00old-school stuff. We had round dials, we had no glass. They were still shooting cell shots. And so you're, you had to learn how to work in a crew with a navigator who by definition outranked you. And that really added some components to it. But, so, but getting back to the Altus experience. So I learned how to do manual. I was the last class to do manual takeoff data, which is a rite of passage. It's an 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. [Laughing] So it's one of the first real delineations between, oh, are you that, you know manual takeoff data generation? Or are you, you know, you just plugged it into the box.

SPRAGUE: So that KC-135 was which model? What series--

ZUCCARO: I only flew the R model.

SPRAGUE: The R model. Okay.

ZUCCARO: But at the time there were a lot of E models left that hadn't been converted yet.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. And 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: No, I came in right after they had upgraded.

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

ZUCCARO: It's just a school that you have to go through and then you get certified, qualified after you complete it. So if you don't complete it, then you can't go on.

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

ZUCCARO: There's no great-- it's, you got "qual"led.

SPRAGUE: You got called. Okay. [Zuccaro laughs] I want to have the verb. You 00:37:00were qualled.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. They may have another technical term but that's how I remember it when I talk about guys going, are they getting qualled yet.

SPRAGUE: Cool.

ZUCCARO: It's probably slang but. [Laughs]

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

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then I must have gone, I think that's when they broke the orders. And then there must have been some time off and I went to survival school.

SPRAGUE: And tell us about survival school and where that is.

ZUCCARO: That's at Fairchild in Washington State, right outside of Spokane. And it is designed, there's an invasion piece. There's a you've been captured and now you're a P.O.W. and they teach you all the ways that you can survive in the woods, and different environments. So there's a classroom portion to start with, 00:38:00and then there is a field portion. And I loved it. It was great. They teach all sorts of skills. I went in March, so it was snowy. And that was the first time that I got to use snow shoes. I came back home and bought snow shoes. I loved it so much. But we had [laughs] at the time that a certain career field had not had to go through this course. But then the regulations changed and they said everybody and the equipment, AFE [Aircrew Flight Equipment], the survival equipment career field is now going to have to go. So in my little unit, we had this really old guy named Jerry, Jerry from New Jersey, and he was about, he was gonna retire like the next year. So he had to been 57, 56, 57 years old. Chain smoker. Oh, Italian guy. And he showed up and he didn't know there was a field 00:39:00portion. 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. And it's pretty rigorous. I mean, you're out camping out and snowshoeing around, carrying all your stuff, the whole time you're up in the mountains. So I was the senior officer in my element. And so I was responsible for everybody. And they were really worried about Jerry because Jerry would fall over with his backpack and not be strong enough to get up and he'd have, you know, pain in his right arm, we'd check him for a heart attack and all this stuff. And so when it came to the evasion portion day where you're supposed to be, you know, hiding behind trees and low crawling and doing all this stuff to evade the enemy, the instructor said, "All right, Lieutenant Page, you just get Jerry from point A to point B [Sprague laughing] without having a heart attack, and we'll call you 00:40:00good on the evasion stuff." And so me and Jerry kind of snowshoed arm-in-arm [laughing] through the mountains to get him to the other side where everybody else is, you know, doing this evasion stuff.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

ZUCCARO: So I remember that. But we got Jerry through the course and it was high stakes 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 isn't that called SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape] school or something like that?

ZUCCARO: Yeah.

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

ZUCCARO: Yep, that sounds about right.

SPRAGUE: Okay. I'm just guessing.

ZUCCARO: But it really does teach you a 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 captors are 00:41:00going to hurt you. They're going to physically 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 don't contemplate your own demise when you're in your 20s or you don't think through even necessarily, like, I have control of what I think and how I think and what I do. And so they really taught you all the fundamental basics of how to resist and survive a bad situation. And that was very eye-opening to me. And I was fortunate to have that training because I think 00:42:00it's really, I've used it many, many ways in my civilian life.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. Okay. So you get back to Alaska?

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about-- It would have probably been you're-- I'm looking at this. It would have been, you're up at the 168th Air Refueling 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.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And then took that. And now I was a part-time Guardsman.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: What we call now a drill status Guardsman.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Meaning that I was not fully employed by the military, but at that time, it was pre-9/11 and the Alaska Air National Guard still does, to this day, sit on alert, where the tankers sit on alert, the fighters sit on alert down in 00:43:00the Anchorage area, and they respond to any time that the Russians would come over close to our ADIZ [Air Defense Identification Zones] or penetrate the ADIZ. So it was a posture left over from the Cold War.

SPRAGUE: And for the civilians, what's an ADIZ?

ZUCCARO: Oh, an area-- mmm, defense, uh--

SPRAGUE: Something, something.

ZUCCARO: Yeah, it's 12 miles off the coast of all sovereign nations. It's that, it's how far you get into that ocean with your sovereign nation's airspace.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So, um, so really that alert had been there since 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. So I was what people affectionately call a guard bum, meaning I 00:44:00wasn't employed full-time, but I bummed enough orders that I could string together a living. I'm gonna pause for a second because I gotta cough.

[Break in recording]

SPRAGUE: Okay. This is Colonel Zuccaro and Luke Sprague, and we're starting segment two of Colonel Zuccaro's interview. And we had just finished talking about being on alert in Alaska and the Cold War implications of that. So one of the questions that I had regarding that was, and this is pre-9/11, this is in 1999-ish. Roughly?

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm, 2000, '99.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What, uh, you had mentioned in your one of your pre-interviews or a different interview, seeing a "Bear" bomber [Tupolev Tu-95], was that kind of during that time or maybe a little later, what was that like?

ZUCCARO: Yeah, so we were talking about the 168th has sat alert since the Cold 00:45:00War. They still do even to this day. And the Russians will fly close to Alaska and we will intercept. That's a pretty routine occurrence. You can read about it in the news after they happen. And I was up on a response where we got alerted, and we scrambled, and we made our timing, and we met our receiver, fighter aircraft, and were way up at the top of Alaska. And one of the F-15s had a problem. And so they told the ground controller, "Hey, we're going to return to base." Well, okay, so we have an F-15 and we can see the Bear bomber, we're only like three miles away. [Coughs] And we're flying along. And pretty soon the boom operator goes, "Hey, did the other fighter tell you he was leaving?" And I'm 00:46:00like, "No?" So the other fighter left. [Laughs] Now it's just a tanker and a Bear bomber at the top of the world. And we're flying around and we're like, "This is pretty cool." You know, we're looking at him a couple of miles away. And then the Bear bomber positions itself between us and Homeland. [Laughs] And I was like-- And I was not the AC, I was the copilot. You know, the AC is like, "This is not good." [Laughs] So we told the controllers, which is now ANR, we told ANR, Alaskan NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] Region, "Hey, we're going to head home." They're like, "Can't you just follow it for a little bit longer?" And we're like, "No, we're not going to follow the bomber how much longer. You know where he is, we know where he is. We're headed back." So we did.

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

ZUCCARO: Well, it went from, "Oh, this is really cool," to like, "I don't like 00:47:00this." No, not that that's threatening, or, it's just a posturing. But it did remind us, like, we are the tanker. Our role is to give gas to the fighters and the fighters have gone home, so we should probably go home. [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. What is it like being on alert all the time in that Guard unit?

ZUCCARO: So, it was fun and boring all at the same time because you didn't launch very often. I think I only launched on alert response, maybe four times? You know, in the 12 years I was up there. Now, I didn't sit alert later on when I got the full-time job. But at the beginning, when I was copilot, I sat alert frequently and I think they would only allow you to sit, like, 7 days in a row. Typically, you're going to sit 2 or 3 days in a row, so you're literally in a 00:48:00modified living area, which for us, were old converted offices. It was not a great facility, but it had a kitchen and a day room, and then individual rooms and you would sit there waiting for the call and on the ready for days and days and days. And you can imagine when you get young people together, you get bored, you play games. We cooked a lot together. We laughed a lot. It was pre-Internet. And then there was Internet, so that was just coming online. So that was a that was a big deal, but it was a great way to get to know your squadron mates. Any time you go through something hard or boring together, you know, you really get to know the other people.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What was it like maintaining the aircraft, even though you 00:49:00weren't necessarily exactly involved in it, but maintaining those aircraft in those conditions?

ZUCCARO: Oh, it's brutal. I really have such high respect for the crew chiefs that work up there because we only had maybe two hangars. 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. We would fly those aircraft till 40 below Fahrenheit. Uh, Celsius. I think it was Fahrenheit, [laughs] sorry. Uh, 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 seconds for the engine to light off. So in a normal light-off sequence, you're going to light-off probably 10, 15 seconds. Fuel's 00:50:00going to the engine and then it sparks and you have your combustion. But you're sitting there and you know, 56 seconds, 57 seconds, 50, you know, kaboom. So that whole time you're pumping fuel and, you know, these big light-offs and big smoke coming out of the tailpipe and it is a different environment than even we see here, cold-wise. So it does make a difference.

SPRAGUE: What would be something that, 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 operations are fuel-dependent. In fact, all operations are fuel-dependent. And so we would do the Cope Thunder exercises, which are now 00:51:00Red Flag exercises up there, and you'd have people come in from all over the world. It was an international, national-level exercise. And the young fighter pilots would come in and they'd have these grand and we'd tell 'em, you know, "You've got X amount of tankers. Yeah, you're going to fly X amount of hours. So you have X amount of gas to divvy up between all of you. Like that's all the gas that's going to be in there. Make your plan with that planning factor." And every single day, every single year, they'd come back, and their plan would be four or five times over the gas that's available. 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, uh, [laughs] trying to get 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 9/11?

ZUCCARO: So I was in Eglin Air Force Base in Florida with a KC-135 crew from Eielson. We had flown down on routine training. We're going to spend the week in, based out of Eglin, refueling AC-130s outta 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-130s. We might have come back to the hotel and had a couple of beers by the pool, [laughing] might have gone to bed a little bit late because that's what you do when you're out flying. And so in the morning, one of the boom operators was banging on the door and I'm like, "Sean, it's early. What are you doing?" Like, "You were up. I know you were up." And he's like, "You need to come watch 00:53:00this." And so we rallied as a crew and we watched the second aircraft hit the buildings, and it really started to hit home. And I was like, "Oh, this is really bad." And so I called my parents and they weren't home, they were at the gym. I called my sister, and I said, "You got to call the gym 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 do your, for your hurricane prep and pay attention to what's going on." 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 had cell phones back then either. I know we didn't so didn't get in contact with him. And then we as a crew, we just watched the rest of the day 00:54:00unfold and then tried to assimilate, you know, what does this mean to call back home and, you know, just get ready. And so I don't know if it was, I think it was the next day we drove on to Eglin to try and get, "Hey, where do you want us to go? What do you want us to do?" And, uh, how do you participate? You want to participate where we needed. And it was the first time I ever had an airman aim a gun at me. I mean, they had that front gate so locked down, you know, very restrictive with who was coming in. 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. So we did not fly home on that 12th, and we, I think we probably flew home on the 13th or the 14th. And we got, 00:55:00there was nobody flying. It was like us and a FedEx 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 air traffic in the national airspace flying at that time. So then got back to the 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?" And it took a few weeks before they actually tasked us to go to the Pacific, to Hawaii, specifically, and we took a bunch of airplanes and a bunch of aircrew maintainers, and we deployed to Hickam and did operations out of there. And for me, I was supposed to go to AC Upgrade 00:56:00and be in a training program, but we all went to Hawaii instead, so instead, typically when you are ready to upgrade to 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. I flew one time with the Hawaiian Guard before I went to AC Upgrade training. And it was the first time I had ever sat in the left seat, 'cause you're supposed to be comfortable in the left seat before you go. And so I'm flying, not with my home unit, in the left seat, [laughs] and they had their Wing Commander on that day, who was a general. So I'm this, you know, young captain, nervous anyways, I had this general, he was nice as could be, he's my instructor. And I get my--and not at my home airfield--and Hickam is Honolulu's 00:57:00airport, 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 out of out of Hawaii and left to go to back to Altus, Oklahoma. I, maybe even from there, maybe they flew me home and then I went back. But it was not long after spending a month in Hawaii that I went to Altus, and I went through AC upgrade.

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

ZUCCARO: I don't think so, it was just the 9/11 response.

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

ZUCCARO: No, 'cause Noble Eagle's a 3310 that-- Well, you know what? It could have been, because the [ONEX??] word would have been established in response to 911 under the 3310 parent operational plan. So it probably-- you know what? 00:58:00You're probably right. I never really thought about it. And it probably was.

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

ZUCCARO: Yep, it's a war plan that NORAD, NORTHCOM [US Northern Command] have to protect homeland defense. And out of that 3310, the execution order, that came from 9/11 is Operation Noble Eagle. And that still stands today. So that alert mission set that was left over from the Cold War has now converted to Noble Eagle and endures not only there but in other locations.

SPRAGUE: Right. So your next, the other curiosity that I have, so the listeners 00:59:00understand. 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.

ZUCCARO: Yep. So when I came in, there were very distinct positions. And the Navigator had very distinct roles. The copilot sat in the right seat, and the joke was all they did was lower and raise the gear. And then the Aircraft 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. They determined that having more of a crew atmosphere is safer. But at that time, you only came into the right seat, and then you upgraded from copilot to aircraft commander. 01:00:00Nowadays, they'll train you in both seats. It's a little bit different. We still have those distinctive positions and roles but they've progressed them. So, and we still, definitely, send our copilots to aircraft commander upgrade. So you're taking somebody who can operate the airplane and now you're training them how to be responsible for the operations because your Aircraft Commander is the one who's responsible for the mission. They're responsible for the airplane. They're responsible for the crew. They're the final decision authority. 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 your unit have any involvement with Operation 01:01:00Northern Watch?

ZUCCARO: Yes. So I deployed to Turkey.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: That was my first contingency deployment.

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

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

SPRAGUE: Wow.

ZUCCARO: I do remember that. I was fairly young. I was still copilot, and I remember my crew. And it was the year of the "hanging chad". Remember the hanging chad with Al Gore and George Bush? 'Cause that was the only thing that was on TV that whole deployment, was the hanging chad.

SPRAGUE: Oh. What year was that?

ZUCCARO: Probably '01, '02 maybe? '01.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. For the election, yeah.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. It was a good eye opener because it was different than the mission sets that I had been doing. So I had been flying all over the Pacific 01:02:00for sure, and the world, and the US. And it was the first time, though, that I had flown into how, you have a more of a stationary AOR [Area of Responsibility], right? So you're you're hitting fighters and sometimes bombers in an area that they're staying. So it's just a different type of flying. And then you really had this sense, like, we didn't want to fly into Syria. And that was it wouldn't be a whoops, it would be an international incident. 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 the sequence work? 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 01:03:00based out of different bases. We'd meet up in an area, the fighters will be closer to wherever the threat is, and then they'll keep the tankers removed from that, out of range of SAMs [Surface-to-Air Missiles] 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 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 oval pattern for hours and hours sometimes, [laughs] until all your gas is gone or until the planned amount of gas is gone. So it is not a lot of change of scenery [laughs] for that portion of the flight. But it's important, again, because the fighters are going towards the threat. And if 01:04:00they're prosecuting targets and 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. So, but we did the full complement of Navy aircraft, Air Force aircraft, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] ally aircraft. That's the thing about the KC-135 and the US tanker force, is 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 tanking to other nations.

SPRAGUE: Does it take a lot of calculations to determine what your fuel load can be?

ZUCCARO: Oh, we have it down pretty well. But you're you know, you're going to 01:05:00start 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 icy or what have you. But all of that, when I talk about the takeoff data, you know, that's how much fuel can you have and still take off. And in those type of scenarios, you're going to take off max fuel load. And so that's different too, because on training missions and a lot of missions, you're not going to take all the gas that you possibly can, but in those type of missions you are. So that would be another difference, too, is, you know, we're taking off really heavy compared to what we train with.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So you're in Turkey. About how long was that?

ZUCCARO: That was short-- At that time, the Guard was swapping out about 14 days, every 14 days.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So then you come back to Alaska.

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: About 2005, it looks like you change positions. You become Chief of Scheduling?

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm. So I got hired. I went from being a Guard bum, part-timer, DSG. All terms for the same employment status to a full-time position as an AGR [Active Guard Reserve]. So as an AGR, you're like an active duty full-time person. Same benefits, same pay structure.

SPRAGUE: And when was that? Roughly?

ZUCCARO: Oh, 2002?

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: I would say, so it's pretty early on, maybe 2003.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Definitely before I had my daughter and she was born in 2003, so probably 2002. Which is really unheard of, except in Alaska. So those were very coveted positions. 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 01:07:00start adding up. So because Alaska and Fairbanks is where it is, there wasn't as much competition because people, frankly don't want to live there. A lot of people don't want to live there. And so long way to say, is I was very fortunate as a lieutenant, I came on AGR. And with that, though, comes a full-time job. So you go from being a pilot, bumming, 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. [Laughs] So I would do all that, run all that. How much fuel can we take 01:08:00off 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 plan them and there's trips that you're not going to take because, you know, the airfield isn't suitable or some other factor. So it's pretty high-pace. Things change all the time. You're constantly reworking stuff. It's just a high-volume, high-energy type shop. And I really loved it, and I loved the people I worked with in there.

SPRAGUE: How do you-- what was your experience with the intersection of being an AGR and people on drill coming in and going out and how did that work?

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So there's there's a lot of thrash and push and pull. And "You 01:09:00have it easier than I do," and you know, "grass is greener". But that's pretty normal. So your full-time staff, doctrinally, are there to provide the infrastructure for the part-timers to come in and train. And so you're there to set that up. You're more combined than that in reality. But there's definitely-- drill weekends, I mean 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. But that's the cycle of the guard.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. Did uh-- You mentioned Current Ops. And was that then later you became a Chief of Scheduling or are they one and the same?

ZUCCARO: No, they're similar, but I did Current Ops and then was in Scheduling I think. And then I was the Chief of Scheduling.

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

ZUCCARO: Oh, at this level?

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

ZUCCARO: Well that's just another job. [Laughs] So when I was chief of scheduling, you know, I have a full-time job and shop to run, 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 are taking care of the people and all the stuff that goes along with that. So it's a it's another layer. Another type of responsibility.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So let's get back here. 2007, 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 there, so 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 five pregnancies during the time that I was there and had two successful births and trying to manage flying. And at that time, the military was not-- they were trying to figure out how to support, put it nicely, they're trying to figure out how to support pregnant women, particularly in flying squadrons. And so you're, by 01:12:00regulation, 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 extremely difficult. So what most people did, and me included, is may not find out you were pregnant until the second trimester so you could keep that currency going in, and that training going and then try and get that waiver during the second. So really, you were just taking that third trimester off and the latter. But that's a delicate balance to strike. And so for me, being in the squadron, you're right at the, you know, where you're an AC and now you're trying to upgrade to instructor pilot and you know that any pregnancy is going to siderail a lot of this. And so during this 01:13:00phase and during my generation of that, your question about, you know what are the differences for men and women? It was really difficult to navigate that. And I think there was one other female pilot when I was at that stage. Typically, there'd be one other. Other females would come and they'd leave. And I think at one point, maybe there were there were three of us, you know, but there certainly weren't any real peers to work through that with. So as a notable for where we are today, I think we're far better off and really do a much better job of making it so that our flyers can can continue to fly and don't get so side-stepped when they want to have a family. But that was that was a difficult time.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. What were some of the adaptations that you had to do to have the 01:14:00pregnancy and continue in your role?

ZUCCARO: Well. You just kind of get through it. So my second child, I actually flew through that second trimester. And I was about 19 weeks and I was pregnant and I was in the shop and I told a boom operator, female boom operator. I was like, "Hey," you know, "something's going on and this just doesn't feel quite right." And she's like, "You need to you need to go to the hospital." I was like, "Well," I was scheduling meeting at 1 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're not back." So I left and I went to the Army hospital and I checked in and there's a long story that goes with it. But essentially I was put into the 01:15:00hospital and I didn't come out for ten weeks. 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. Five degrees, head low, I didn't get out of bed, lost all my muscles, couldn't walk. Ended up with a C-section and a significantly premature child who was born and did great. He went into the NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] and then there is eight weeks into the NICU and then I come back out. I come back home and I'm trying to get back on flying status. And they considered the recoup time when he was in the NICU and I had 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. They gave me a PT [Physical Training] test. I was like, "I just got, you know, physically cut two ways. I couldn't 01:16:00walk like eight weeks ago." And they're like, "Oh, too bad. You know, you got to take your physical fitness test." I'm like, "Okay." 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 you just, at that time, you just got back into the game as quick as you could. Put your head down and and try to pretend like life wasn't hard. But life was really hard. [Laughs]

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

ZUCCARO: Yep, and it doesn't-- it may not show up because we've been going to the theater support package. 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 01:17:00the bombers that would rotate in and out of there through a theater security package. Now, they consider it a Pacific deployment now, but it's not a named operation. It's the theater security package. Or it used to be called the bomber security package.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: But then that is, you know, it's interesting in the Pacific, and I'm really glad that I been able to see the Pacific operations pre-9/11 and post-9/11 and then now. And really the tankers, you know, have been solid doing the same type of preventative support for decades. And we're very 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 01:18:00experience that this nation has operating in that theater through multiple phases of history is going to serve us well.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So I think we're up to, '05, '06, [Zuccaro laughs] in that neighborhood somewhere, to help keep us on track.

ZUCCARO: Yep, yeah. So I left and I decided, between the medical stuff that was going on with my child, and Alaska is really far away from the lower 48, and family support and some other stuff that was going on. My husband retired and I found another AGR job, full-time job in Florida at the 601st Air and Space Operations Center. So in 2007, 2008? 2008 is when we left Alaska. And moved to Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. Which was great. So in the Guard, in order to 01:19:00move locations, you have to apply to a job and get hired. So I applied to the Florida Air National Guard as a tanker duty officer with the 601st Air and Space Operations Center, which is manned by the 101st 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 does a tanker airlift duty officer do? [Zuccaro laughs] Please help me.

ZUCCARO: So we talked about the alert that was sat at Eielson through the Alaskan NORAD Region. So the Air and Space Operations Center is the CONR, the Continental US NORAD Region. And the Operations Center is where the NORAD mission sets are planned and executed from. So the 601st AOC [Air Operations 01:20:00Center] is where the Homeland Defense mission, the Operation Noble Eagle is controlled out of, C2ed [Command and Control] out of, as well as the NORTHCOM mission sets, which is all the domestic responses. So there's three NORAD regions. There's the Alaska NORAD Region, the Canadian NORAD Region, and the Continental US NORAD Region. And the tanker airlift duty officer does the planning and execution for both the CONR, the Continental, and the CANR, the Canadian.

SPRAGUE: And that's for airlift. Tanker airlift.

ZUCCARO: So in the Operations Center, you have an Air Mobility Division. And so in that Air Mobility Division, you have airlift cell, you have a tanker cell, 01:21:00you 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 [coughs] and they work with 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 and the Army and a bunch of other entities. But the tanker duty officer is the one there that's going to make the phone call when they're told to launch the tanker that launches the tanker. [Both laughing]

SPRAGUE: Wow. Okay. Anything you remember from that? Looks like it was, '08, '09.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I took that position, and at the time-- [Coughing] Excuse me.

SPRAGUE: Do you need a break?

ZUCCARO: No, I think I'm good. So I took that position thinking that I would 01:22:00have 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 Lieutenant Colonel, it was capped at Major. But I determined, for many reasons, that that was a steady income, steady medical, closer to family. And it was it was what we needed to do. So we all moved there. And I did that duty officer position for a very short time and they said, "Hey, we actually need an airlift control team chief, which is the one that makes the ATO, the Air Tasking Order, and then ACO [Air Control Order], 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 01:23:00scheduling experience, now I'm doing that on the, so the tactical level, more of the operational level. And on that air tasking order is all the air plan. 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. [Laughs] I had a boss at the Air Mobility Division, but I worked for the Combat Plans Division and the Strat [Strategy] Division and Execution Division. And so I had a lot of autonomy, and I had good bosses. They just kind of let me go, and I did all sorts of things [laughing] with very little permission, but they liked the results. So I just kind of kept going.

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

ZUCCARO: Yes. Yep. So I was, I came to the Operation Center as a young major. And so I worked as a major. And then somewhere in there, 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 API code." And I was like, "That sounds great." But Florida Air National Guard didn't have any tankers, so I became an attached flier with the 117th 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 helped me 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. 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 01:25:00to fly. Was there ever an instance where you as the air refueling control team chief were cutting orders or doing planning for this Air National Guard unit?

ZUCCARO: Oh, definitely, because they have the Noble Eagle mission. So they they liked it because they had a direct in to CONR, as a unit. So it was a synergistic relationship, too. But it really helped me because I am doing the planning for this unit and in five others. And I would 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 command and control because of the authorities and delegations. So it was a lot of people working and networking and dispelling myths about what really goes on at this Air 01:26:00Operations Center and reassurance that, yeah, we really know what we're doing. [Laughing] But when you get the fields perspective of, you know, why did it come down that way or why didn't you tell us this or that? So it was it was beneficial to be up there working with them.

SPRAGUE: During this time and during these missions, did you have any, um, with the defense of the homeland, in particular, Operation Noble Eagle-- I'm going to use that now, a general term as a civilian would.

ZUCCARO: Sure.

SPRAGUE: 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. [Both laughing]

SPRAGUE: Eventually.

ZUCARRO: Yeah. But I definitely had a front row seat and participation in like the BP oil spill. Haitian Earthquake. Lidle was the one, flew into New York in a 01:27:00small airplane. There were aircraft, sadly, that had hypoxic events and then would coast out 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 real hub, because you don't just have the NORAD homeland defense, but you have all that NORTHCOM. So all the floods, all the hurricanes, Sandy, um, all of those. And you're watching that, you know, the Mobility Division respond with the airlift. And so I did a little bit with the airlift, 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. 01:28:00So you're doing that coordination. Uh, presidential elections where you know, you do all the coverage for that. We still doing space shuttle launches where they'd put up a cap for the space shuttle launches. Super Bowls, NASCAR races. You know, we oftentimes have a lot of air coverage that maybe the general public doesn't realize.

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

ZUCCARO: We-- [laughs] It was one of the times where a lot of my old friends, we were definitely chatting and making jokes and saying, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not at the Operations Center today," because we know what they're going through. We had the, oh, I can't remember the J. J-lands. It's a big weather balloon-type-thing that came untethered and drug out mile-long cord up and down the East Coast for 01:29:00a while that was supposed to shoot itself down and it didn't. And we all went through that together and we made a lot [laughing] a lot of correlations between that. And you can laugh about it now, but they are definitely high-stress events. Where you're trying to determine what is the intent. Because up until 9/11, nobody ever thought that somebody would intentionally run an airplane into something and weaponize that.

SPRAGUE: What I have to ask, as a pilot, do you have any thoughts on them being used as weapons or 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 01:30:00did you have any operations in that time where you were in support or involved in planning? For, I'm sure you did, Operation Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom?

ZUCCARO: No, because that's not our area of responsibility. So we have the CONUS [Continental United States].

SPRAGUE: CONUS, yep.

ZUCCARO: Well I did do, and I point the picture on the wall, the Vancouver Canadian Winter Olympics.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: So I got to do that air refueling plan for that work with the Canadians. And I got the first American to be awarded the Canadian Award, which is pretty cool because at the 601st, it's a bi-national organization. So, because we have the Canadian NORAD 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 01:31:00operations. So when it came to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, we did the planning to do the air refueling support for that. So that that was one of my favorite things.

SPRAGUE: And was that what year was that, in about?

ZUCCARO: 2010.

SPRAGUE: 2010. Okay. Yep. Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah. And through that came some process 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 CANR, how process-wise that would happen, and so it's not a very exciting topic, but it was an example of how I had a lot of autonomy to to really look at something and say, "Hey, we can make this better."

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. And, um, 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, May 2014. And you're in Essex.

ZUCCARO: That was a really short stint. So I had been Air Refueling Team Chief for a long time and really liked my position, had a lot of autonomy and didn't have to sit in the Air Mobility Division. And I was on top of the world and it was time to move on. And I didn't, I'd kind of outgrown position and my boss had recognized that. And he said, "You need to come up to the mobility division." And I was kind of being a pill, I know I was, because he told me I was, and I totally believe him. And it was so strange, one of the days, and I was 01:33:00begrudgingly, 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 Center said, "Hey. The general wants to see you. He's come into my office in 20 minutes. You need to be down there." And I was like, because the 1st Air Force is the numbered Air Force. It's actually the only numbered Air Force that has a Guardsman as a commander. And they're literally right across the street from the Air Operations Center. And they're the numbered Air Force for NORAD NORTHCOM. And so they had a new three star general, Major, or, uh, Lieutenant General Etter. And I had briefed him, you know, when he first came in. I can't remember, something in regards to tankers and some issue we were working. So in my mind on this day with my boss, I'm like, "Well, that's strange because I, you know, I 01:34:00just briefed him," and nobody's that interested in tanker 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 about being at-- he's coming to talk to you about the executive officer position." And I said, "Well, that's really strange because I don't know much about that, and I really don't know anybody who'd be interested. And why are you why would he talk to me about it?" And he's like, "Adria, he's coming to ask you if you would be a good fit to apply for that position." And I'm like, "Well, why would he want me to do that?" He said, "Because somebody told him you'd be a good candidate." I'm like, okay, so I've used up, you know, like 10 minutes of my 20 minutes to get my head around what is going on. And, you know, ten minutes later, I'm across the desk from this lieutenant general, and he's like, "Somebody told me you'd make a good executive officer." And I'm like, "Oh, I don't know who told you that." I said, 01:35:00"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 is like 2014, and I'm pretty sure that positions for people who need to go on." And he's like "Yeah," he goes, "Typically it is," he goes, "but I'm not looking for somebody who's going to use the position." He goes, "I need a really good exec." And, and I said, "Well, I don't know much about that." And he said, "Well, can you keep confidences?" And I was like, "I was a bartender for 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 really need somebody with fighter expertise, don't you?" And he goes, 01:36:00"I have fighter expertise. I need people with other expertise." And I'm like, "Okay." And I said, "Can I think about it?" You know, like I've had this notion now for 20 minutes and he's like, "You can have till Monday." This is a Friday. I said, "Okay." And I went home and I thought about it, and I had a girlfriend who had done the position for a different commander. And her experience was not great at all. It was very long hours and young kids, you know, and in my mind, I just had to survive for another couple of years. And I was done. And I took the-- I applied for the position. He selected me for that position. And I remember talking to him afterwards. I was like, "Hey, General Etter, like, if this isn't working out, just tell me, because I got a pretty good gig going on at the AOC." And he said, "I have fired many people. I would have no problem 01:37:00firing you." And I was like, okay, all right. Well, at least we're honest. And that position, oh, my goodness, did it turn out to be just the most rewarding experience I could have possibly ever walked into. He was the most wonderful officer. He was all about, you know, explaining things to me. Let me into meetings just so that I could get exposure to to the higher level. And I truly valued that year as the executive officer, you know.

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

ZUCCARO: I was a lieutenant colonel, yeah.

SPRAGUE: And also, about that time, you might have taken a leadership course with Homeland Security. Well, yeah.

ZUCCARO: Well, yeah, that was really cool.

SPRAGUE: Is that before or after?

ZUCCARO: It was during.

SPRAGUE: During. Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yeah, so unbeknownst to me, he was he was working on-- Because I was set, I was going to retire in October of 2017. I would have been 20 years of points 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 timeframe. But he was like, "Keep your options open." You know, "I think you could go on and and be a commander." And I'm like, "Ah." And he's like, "But you have to do your war college." I'm like oh, I don't really want to do that. And in the midst of that, though, he's like, you know, "You haven't been to school for a long time." He goes, "There's a really good Homeland Defense School. Why don't you go to that and see what you think?" So this Homeland Defense School was run by another Guardsman, the TAG [The Adjutant General] of New Hampshire, General Rice, at the time. He ended up being the head of the Air National Guard. But yeah. Anyways, he ran this course 01:39:00at Harvard, through the Harvard program, and it was fantastic. So during that timeframe, we had the 9/11 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 of the Boston Marathon shooting. So we got a firsthand accounting of him. And the thing that's 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. And so learning those nuances, particularly in different scenarios like the Boston Marathon, you know, how does military, how's the guard fit into that? How's the local police, same with 9/11 and the [Sully??], the on-scene 01:40:00fire commander for 9/11 was the same on-scene fire chief for the [Sully??]. So we got the firsthand accounting of that. And really the course was designed to help you understand how you can partner during that both legally and synergistically. How you can partner up with the Guard and your local responding forces. So it was a fantastic course.

SPRAGUE: And backing up a little bit, the lieutenant general who you worked for, his name was Lettner, or Lentner?

ZUCCARO: Etter, Etter.

SPRAGUE: How do you spell that?

ZUCCARO: Echo, Tango, Tango, Echo, Romeo.

SPRAGUE: Etter. Got it. Echo, Tango, Tango, Echo, Romeo. Got it. No problem.

ZUCCARO: Bill Etter.

SPRAGUE: Bill Etter. Okay. Did you have a, I've gotta 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 pick one from Alaska. She was a female navigator. She was the only one that ever 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 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. And she was right because I took 5 to get 2 and she had had similar experiences where she said, "You don't get to control this, so you better start, or you will run out of time." So she was the one at-- and I had another dear friend at at at Eielson who helped me figure out how to be a mom in 01:42:00the military, which was difficult, really difficult at that time. So those two women, probably there in Alaska at that time was difficult. We'll 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, you just know it, right? There's functioning teams and then there's highly-functioning teams. And these two other majors, we all, all three of us came in, all three of us got along and we were at-- like nothing was impossible. And it was really the first time I had experienced collaboration on that level. And so we became, you know, peers to each other. And they did some amazing things. The Haitian earthquake, 01:43:00with the setting up of Ramsey, which had been a regional movement cooperation coordination center. And even though Haiti obviously isn't in the NORTHCOM AOR, 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 the 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. And so being around-- I had never, Alaska was kind of a struggle with people. Except for a few. But 01:44:00there was a lot of struggles there trying to fit into a team be be included. And then Florida was exactly opposite. And so I would say mentors. There were really peer mentors that I hadn't experienced before. And then the 1st Air Force was definitely General Etter.

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

ZUCCARO: Yeah. Yeah. So JJ Grinrod, who I'm very good friends with now, and Dave Smith, and myself, were the three that kind of came in at the same time. But I and I enjoyed working for my boss, Brad Graff, Steve [Kozlecki??].

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And oh, and Luke Mullins. He was a boom operator in plans. He was 01:45:00really good. Good peer to have. Tim Spencer. [Laughs] I could go on all day. [Laughs]

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

ZUCCARO: No, that was more when I came here.

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: Yep. So he, so General Etter said, "Let's put your career back on track." And I was like, "It is tracking right towards 2017, just where I need it to track to." And he's like, "Oh, the Guard has this command program. If you do your war college, then we could consider you for a command." And I'd never considered command, because in the Air Operations Center construct, it's divisions, right? So you have division chiefs that's a little different than 01:46:00commanders. And, you know, I knew what a squadron command and group command and stuff were from Eielson, more from the field structure. But I had never really considered the commander as a separate type of responsibility and job. So I was like, "No, I don't know." And I am, I have a hard time saying no to an open door. Like, let's see what's on the other side of that. He's like, "If you do your war college, then at least, you know, you'd be in the running." And I was like, "Fine, I'll do my Air War College." And I did Air War College in 42 days. It was awful. But I did it. And I had spent, and I don't feel bad about it, because the system allowed it. And I had done the whole master's program for ACSC [Air Command and Staff College]. So I had spent about two, two and a half years doing ACSC, PME [Professional Military Education] to the master's level, and Air War College was very similar and a lot of the material was similar. So I just put my nose to the grindstone. They'd give you a paper to write. I'd write 01:47:00the paper, I'd turn it, I'd get the next one. I'd spend 7 days, write the paper and turn it in and got my Air War College done and in record time. And that allowed General Etter to put me on, and put me in to compete for the Squadron Commander's command sponsored list. And what that program is, is to develop commanders. Once 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 AGR, your with your own rank control grade taken care of. So there's some attractant for the unit and it's developmental for the person. And then the Guard Bureau ideally gets experienced commanders. So he got me into that program. They selected me, and then I had to find a unit and I 01:48:00started asking around who might need commanders at the squadron level. And Milwaukee was one wing that had a gap and, and they needed 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 NGB [National Guard Bureau]. They liked that to happen, which would have meant a move to D.C., but came to Milwaukee and became the 128th Operations Support Squadron Commander and started my Wisconsin Guardsman 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: Mm-hmm. Yep, yep, 'cause swear into the governor.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And then help me out with the Operations Support. You've given a 01:49:00description here, but what help me out with what that is.

ZUCCARO: So in a wing, in a tactical wing, which we are at the 128th, you have a 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 squadrons. Uh, the Air Refueling Squadron, which has most of your part-time pilots and booms, and 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 AFE [Aircrew Flight Equipment] and Airfield Support. So it's Operation Support Squadron is mostly the full-timers that run the 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, roughly?

ZUCCARO: 110, 115. Uh, so Guard units have typically not 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. So that was that was the first challenge. I think there is a odd sense of why is she here? Where did she come from? And if she's on a Guard Bureau program, she's likely not to stay. So human nature says, "I don't want to invest in somebody who's not going to stay." So that was probably the first challenge. And we just kind of worked 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 01:51:00commander. So you just try and team build 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 figure out the way forward. But I don't think it took too long before people started to trust that I really didn't have any alternative motives and fairly decent person, and [Laughs] 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, 128th, and then I have you going for a short time over to the 506th? Is that right? Or am I misreading that or is that just?

ZUCCARO: No, that's great. That's a deployment, though. So when I came here, you know, 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, Sentinel, and I think there's 01:52:00a third contingency name in there-- not, not coming to my mind now, but mostly Inherent Resolve in Sentinel Freedom. Freedom Sentinel.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And I went just as aircrew. 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, stayed mostly in the Pacific and Turkey and then the air operation center in Florida, we did not deploy. And I was an in-garrison deployed. So I was one of the very few 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. Every Tanker pilot in the world has been to the deed like a million times. So I was glad to have that opportunity to go and and experience 01:53:00where most of my peers had been experiencing from multiple, multiple deployments. But then, so I came back and 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 support package. Back to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. And so I went on that though, as the commander, the deck commander. [Coughs]

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Which is the 506th, 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 at Anderson, we had 16 stars 01:54:00coming through, meaning high profile people. We had General Lengyel, we had General Goldfein, we had, General, uh, not Shanahan, the PACAF [Pacific Air Forces] commander at the time. Heather Wilson, came through, all these people came into Anderson, because it was just kind of this center of operations. It was also during the Olympics that were going on in, um, where were the Olympics then, in Korea or Japan?

SPRAGUE: Good question.

ZUCCARO: During that timeframe, so there was heightened awareness and Kim Jong Un said, "Well, I won't do it during the Olympics." And, you know, we're flying aircraft and the Chinese are flying aircraft, and uh, and they're, you know, in an aggressive way. And we're doing shows of force. And then we had some personnel stuff that had gone on during that deployment. So it was not [laughs] an easy 60 days, but came back after that and you know, was glad to have done it.

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

ZUCCARO: No, no, I went to group command.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: Yep. So that by that point, the Guard Bureau was like, "All right, it's been two years. Are you going to come to the Guard Bureau or not?" And I was like, "No, I'm going to stay here." So I had applied for the Ops Group commander and got that position. So I told the Guard Bureau I was not coming to the Guard Bureau, which was fine. I mean, they're, it's a natural progression. And so I stayed on as group commander and that's where I ranked up to O-6 [Officer, Paygrade 6], 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 unbeknownst to 01:56:00me during the time I was at the 1st 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 on the career progression, say yes, I would go to PME in-residence. And lo and behold, 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 ACSC, 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. But because I had said I would do me in residence and they selected me. Now I had to determine what next 01:57:00there. So in the lists of PME in-residence, you can go to Maxwell. For the Air Force, you can do another services senior-level PME, but then they have these really cool fellowships ones, the corporate fellowship. And so I just, I was like, "Oh, this will never happen, but this is what I want." So I put corporate fellowship in there and lo and behold, they select me for the corporate fellowship program. But I had just taken the group and I said, "I can't step aside for a year." They need a group commander. So I deferred it for a year and then I, I can't remember exactly, and maybe I was still squadron commander, but somewhere in there I ended up deferring it for another year, which is never been done, never heard of. But they, they came back and they said, "Yeah, we'll approve the deferral for a second year." And I'm like, "Okay." And I even had to 01:58:00talk to General Dunbar, who is the TAG of Wisconsin 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." Like, I just I can't leave the group right now. We were preparing for a nuclear inspection and stuff. And so he was like, "Oh, I," you know, "I really don't think." And I was like, "That's what I'm doing." So I deferred it for a second year, they signed off on it. It comes and goes and it's time to go to the corporate fellowship. And the lady who runs that program, she's like, "How did you get a second year deferral?" That's not, you know, "we don't do that." I was like, "Well, Karen, your name's on the approval." [Both laughing] And they're like, "Oh, I guess they allowed that to happen." So I got selected to be the WE Energies corporate fellows, the 01:59:00Wisconsin Energy 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 in the military are useful and coveted on the outside. And I never really quite believe that. I was like "Oh, everybody's got skills," and, you know, but I think it was an eye opener. Not that one's better or the other, but we really do get some good skills in our military experience. And I would say, 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 02:00:00nice job with those particular skill sets and they're very wanted on that civilian world, they're looking for leaders who have the confidence to be decisive and make those decisions on a risk-based analysis.

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

ZUCCARO: Oh, my gosh. [Laughing] So the corporate fellowship program you take, 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, or WEC, and you're supposed to go out and kind of interact with the c-suite, and see at that level how they do particularly acquisitions, but also all the other things that occur at that 02:01:00level. And you're really there to kind of observe. You might take on a small project or two, but you're not supposed to have a job. So, and you get some training, 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 did a little business stuff so that we're not complete idiots when we go into these Fortune 500 companies. Not sure how well that worked. But, um, [laughs] no, it was great schooling. And then you go to your corporation. So I went to my corporation and I walk in Day 1 and my 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!" The computer worked first day. [Sprague laughing] That would never happen in the military. And I sit down, I'm arranging my stuff, because I have stuff, which never happens in the 02:02:00military either, and supplies. And this man comes in at 9:00 and he sits down and I was like, "Hi!" He was like, "My name's Dan, I'm your 9 o'clock." I'm like, "All right." Didn't know I had a 9 o'clock but that, this is great. "Nice to meet you, Dan!" And he starts talking to me, and I was like, "Dan, this feels like you think I'm your supervisor." [Laughing] "Because you are." And I go, "Am I?" And he goes, "You're our new director of fleet." I go, "All right, what does the director of fleet do?" And he goes, "Well, I'm one of your three subordinates in there, and there's three-- You're director and there's three of us direct reports, and we oversee 40 different maintenance locations. And we have, it was like 120 mechanics and you have $63 million worth of fleet vehicles 02:03:00that you're responsible for." I'm like, "Am I?" So that was my intro, and sure enough, I had all that. And they allowed me to operate as if I was the director of fleet, because I was, and away we went, and it was amazing experience.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And that was roughly 2019 through 2020, roughly?

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm, yep. It was a year-long program.

SPRAGUE: Okay. We're going to quick step 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 nuclear?

ZUCCARO: Yeah. So I did get some training on the nuclear enterprise because, in 02:04:00Alaska, we did the 3310 mission sets and the Pacific mission sets. And then at the Air Operations Center, we did the Homeland Defense and the NORAD and NORTHCOM mission sets. But I had never been introduced into the STRATCOM [Strategic Command] mission set, which most tanker units that are located in the CONUS have a nuclear support role in the STRATCOM mission. So, like, when I became that squadron commander, that was my first introduction into the STRATCOM mission set. So I had a large learning curve to overcome, because everybody else had been doing it, you know, their whole career. And it's pretty complicated mission set, pretty demanding. Very important. And so I did go to some schooling at Kirkland to kind of help with that. And as a group commander, the reason I 02:05:00didn't want to take that fellowship was because once every five years, we have a nuclear operational readiness inspection. That's just a really big deal. It's where you get looked at to see whether you can do your nuke mission. And so I had to start a little bit of the training for the fellowship, as operational group commander, a few weeks. But then I came back and did the inspection. And really, the inspection's important, but the year prior, the year and a half prior, where you're really making sure that everybody's prepped and 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. That just wouldn't be right.

SPRAGUE: And that was probably why you received the Nuclear Deterrence Operation Service Medal, maybe?

ZUCCARO: Anybody who's in 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 to me. That's a that's an I mean, it is special to me. But it's when you're in that mission set. And we passed the inspection, which is a big deal.

SPRAGUE: What, uh. So we get forward to 2019, 2020. You've completed your Secretary of Defense Executive Fellowship.

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: With [WAC??]

ZUCCARO: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: You attend a Darden School of Graduate of Business in Charlottesville. That was the--

ZUCCARO: That was at the beginning of the 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 thought was that I would come back and compete for the wing commander position and the current Wing Commander at 02:07:00the 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 fit back into the wing, there really wasn't a spot. So, I had started the, "Okay, 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. 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 "I can't turn this around" mentally 02:08:00as I could have gotten, but I really felt, yeah, when the plans changed the first time was like, "But I still have service left in me." And it was really difficult to then say, "Oh, okay, well, I guess, you know, I guess time's up." And going through that emotional wickets. So, to come back and I was like, "Well I still feel like I have service in me." So I put my name in to compete for that for the wing commander position and got it. And I'm really, I'm really glad that I did, because this is, I mean, it is a role of a lifetime. It's a position that very few people get to command a flying wing during wartime operation in which Global War on Terror, preparing for whatever is coming in the Pacific. I mean, it's just a, yeah, it's a job of a lifetime, and to have missed that or forgone 02:09:00it now for other other reasons, I'm really glad that I came back. And it's very rewarding. It's very fulfilling. It's very, very challenging, it'll wear you out, but I was glad to have been able to compete for it.

SPRAGUE: I would imagine that competition was pretty intense for the wing position.

ZUCCARO: Mmm. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: I would imagine it would be it's sought after, I would imagine, too, very sought. And you are the first female wing commander here.

ZUCARRO: Here, yep.

SPRAGUE: Yes, of this wing. Tell me a little bit, you had mentioned it in the pre-interview, and I'm curious about the role of both being the wing commander and the base commander, if I understand you correctly.

ZUCCARO: So in an Air Force construct, particularly on a base that has one 02:10:00mission, you have your base commander and your flying operations commander or the wing commander. So different services will do it differently and actually even different Air Force bases, if they have multiple missions going on, they might have multiple wings. And then a base commander and you'll have multiple wing commanders. But here we're 99 acres, which is fairly small. We have 1 flying mission instead of multiple types of aircraft. So the wing commander is base, flying, you know, all all of the roles.

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

ZUCCARO: It is. So here's the 128th, we have roughly 900 people. Just under 900 people. But two-thirds of those are your DSGs, your Drill Status Guardsmen. So 02:11:00they 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. We have to do all the maintenance. We have to do all the HR, we have do the medical that's required for the military. So it takes a lot and it is like a little, it is a small town.

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

ZUCCARO: So I think it's important the US needs a military, desires a military, that's far, many more soldiers and airmen and sailors than they can elect to pay full-time. So, to get-- if you didn't have the Guard and Reserve, and we were all full-time, we'd be a lot more expensive. [Both laughing] And so the construct of having a strategic reserve, which is how they used to talk about us, is a great setup because it allows you to expand and contract and financially, the Guard is far more economical than than having a full active duty force. The other benefit that you get is your part-timers, they're out 02:13:00there in the 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 outside civilian experience. So I do think it's a good construct. I think the way we've been used for Global War on Terrorism and some of the pacing now is, 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 in the background. And I think sometimes people think that there's this huge reserve when there isn't.

SPRAGUE: Okay. 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 02:14:00your interviews, in terms of did you have any deployments for COVID-19?

ZUCCARO: Oh, yeah. Our forces were, our airmen were deployed many, many, many days, 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? You know, those were significant, COVID was significant. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about meeting President Biden at the field here.

ZUCCARO: So I think in the first year I was here, first year and a half I was 02:15:00here, we had something like eight presidential visits. So Trump, Pence, Biden, Harris. Who else has come through? They've all come through multiple times and certainly isn't routine, but there is a routine to it. And so I, you know, my biggest concern is typically, please don't trip on the carpet. Please don't slip on the ice. Please, please get down that jetway safely. 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 an outreach, you've mentioned this in some of your interviews, to the surrounding community. Tell me about that a little bit.

ZUCCARO: We are trying very hard to be just known in our own local community, which is, it sounds like well, "Of course you are known," but we're really not 02:16:00as familiar to people as we'd like to be. So I think because Wisconsin doesn't have an active duty base, people who are familiar with the military typically are people who have military in their family or somebody close to them that they know. So there's a lot of supporters of the military in Wisconsin. It's a huge support network for the military but they have very limited knowledge on who their local military is. And so the 128th is the hometown Air Force to Milwaukee. We're the Brew City Tankers. But if you go out on the street and pull ten people, it would be lucky to get 1 that knows what the 128th 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 this is who 02:17:00we are."

SPRAGUE: Tell me a little bit about the "Brew City Tankers", quote, unquote.

ZUCCARO: [Laughs] Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And the hockey team, too. I'm interested in that.

ZUCCARO: Oh, well, we do have members that go and compete. We have a bowling team that goes and competes, and then we have a hockey team mostly just in that Air Force Tournaments. But we just kind of latched on to the Brew City, and used it. And we call ourselves the Brew City Tankers. We're also known out there as Milwaukee. A lot of people refer to us as Milwaukee, which is great. It's just a way to kind of help brand and and create, just 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 it's part of the outreach and and just part of doing things that are our members connect to the community and to give 02:18:00back to our local community. There's an organization called Flight to the North Pole that brings children with, typically cancer, but other types of illnesses. And through that organization they use 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. We also have scout days. This year we brought out BSA's scouts and Girl Scouts both this year and last year. 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 that they needed. Bring the Civil Air Patrol out. We try and bring 02:19:00business leaders out. We had mayor out in the city, executor out this year. Executive sorry, the city executive, Crowley. So, and we're in the schools. And so for us, where there's a fine line between familiarity 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 try and make that really clear is because we want to be known as part of the community. And that's the familiarity part. And as Guard bases go, as you go through time, they they always look to see, you know, what bases are relevant and what aren't. And it really matters whether your 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 part of the 02:20:00reason 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 is your leadership philosophy, if you had one. What would you what would you grill it down to?

ZUCCARO: It's pretty simple for me is participation. It's just like, I tell people, it's really pretty simple. Yeah, you need to show up and and you need to participate. And when you do that with with no other agenda in mind, but whatever the mission is for then for the day 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 is whatever your-- got in front of you to do, you just do 02:21:00that to your best ability. And then things happen from there. So it's not much of a philosophy, but it-- and that really 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 commander." You know, I didn't have this 5, 10, 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 then I would start in Current Ops and do mission planning. And then they'd say, "Oh, she's a really good planner. Put her in the exercise," and then, "Oh, she's really good planner at the exercise, put her in it," you know, and so I found for me, if I showed up and I did to the best of my ability, then 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-'90s 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. So it's not unusual to have women in the workplace for sure, but women in all sorts of facets. So the young men, they're just used to having women around. When I came in the 90s, they weren't used to having female pilots around. It was unusual, still. It's not so unusual now. And so society has helped that and take a lot of those barriers down. But the young women, they're great. Yeah. Where my generation, and 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 02:23:00taking a look at the system and saying, "Okay, you're gonna, we're going to need to change things so that more people can operate in your system," "in the system," I should say. And so that means, you know, changing things, slowly, sometimes, 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. Why is the young lady going out with body armor that doesn't fit her? That's not right. You know, changing things like airplane height settings. You know, they did this great study that determined that, it took the average male size from the 1960s and they've created all these airplanes with that height. 02:24:00Well, that excludes people who are too tall and too short according to that which is on the short side. A lot of your women and Asian, Hispanic cultures have shorter people. Well, 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 your pool from the get-go, you can't expect somehow to have this well-rounded leadership later on because you've already excluded them. 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." And so I'm really proud of the younger generation 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 02:25:00as a workplace in terms of sexual harassment, how MST [Military Sexual Trauma], how have things changed? Have they not changed? What was your experience of that?

ZUCCARO: We're definitely more aware of it, 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 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 ignored that your environment actually allows somebody nefarious to operate. And that can be sexual harassment, that can be any of your nefarious 02:26:00behaviors. 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. And you cannot stop all deviant behaviors, but you can try. And I think we're doing way better at trying. And more people are trying because we're saying, "Hey. This isn't," you know, a leader can't control everything. It takes the whole entire wing to say, "We're going to watch for it and we're going to try and create an environment where it's hard for it to occur."

SPRAGUE: Okay. Tell me about what, where you see your future in the military [Zuccaro laughs] if you would, or just conjecture or projections or what are your thoughts?

ZUCCARO: I still have some service left in me.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: And I think there will be at least another chapter. I don't know how 02:27:00long that chapter will be. But I, I think there will be another chapter where I can continue to serve.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, um. I always ask this question, How do you think your life would be different [Zuccaro laughs] if you hadn't served, you hadn't joined, you hadn't raised your right hand, swore the oath.

ZUCCARO: So when I say I came in, I wanted to be a pilot, that was primarily the motivator. Motivation. Thank you. But somewhere along that line, that service grew in me. I am way more service-oriented as a colonel than I was as a lieutenant. And I don't know. If people helped grow that or the mission help grow it, but the whole experience helped grow that understanding and fulfillment 02:28:00from 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. And I'm thankful for that because I think it's, I certainly could go on the outside and make a lot more money at this 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. [Both laugh] Somebody asked me yesterday and I think it is, selfishly, I met a 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. And it is hard. It is. The older they get, the harder it is to really capture. And so I'm hopeful that, you know, 02:29:00maybe someday my grandchildren will be able to see this and have some sort of sense of who, you know, who I was and what I did. And so there's a selfish motive, I think. [Sprague laughs]

SPRAGUE: Did we miss anything that you'd like to cover?

ZUCCARO: Boy, we really did cover a lot. No, I think if you had asked me, you know, what are you proud of over your span of service? And when I talk to the younger generation of women, they're thankful that we, and the generation before me made it through this system and made it so that they can change the system a little bit more than than we did. Probably a lot more than than we did. So I'm proud to have, I think probably made a pathway for change. I'm proud to be a 02:30:00mother. And part of the reason I think probably that I continued to serve was to be an example to say that you can do this. You know, it's not easy to be a mom and be a commander and be a pilot. And, but nothing is really easy. And and truthfully, I think as a society, there's a lot of dual-working households now. Right? And so it's not just the military that needs to figure out how is it we're going to have dual-working households. I think corporate needs to figure that out too. So to be to be a mom in the military and a pilot and commander, I think it's important to say, "Yes." You know, they talk about people do what they see. So maybe in some small way that's played a part in somebody else's pathway.

SPRAGUE: Anything else that you'd like to talk about?

ZUCCARO: [Pauses] No, I think [laughs] we've covered a lot.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you for interviewing with us.

ZUCCARO: Well, thank you for spending the last few hours with me. [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: Okay.

ZUCCARO: You haven't fallen asleep yet!

SPRAGUE: No. Okay. This concludes the interview.