Army recruited kids, got Mom

How does a divorced, middle-aged mother of two end up in Iraq?

It was 2004 and Amy Spears' two kids, Mike and Adrienne, were at Lakewood Ranch High.

He was a football player; she, a cheerleader.

Then the Army recruiter came 'round.

"The kids were kind of interested," Spears recalled. "Then the recruiter started talking to me."

He asked the former Army MP what she did for a living.

Occupational therapist, she said.

"He said, 'The military is short of people like you,'" Spears, then 41, recalled. "I said I'm too old. He said, 'No, you're not.'"

So into the Army Reserve she went.

Her kids made a big deal out of Mom's swearing-in ceremony at home.

"I thought, 'Am I really doing this?'" Spears said, smiling. "The kids were so supportive. I was excited to start a new avenue that might take me somewhere different than a traditional job."

Somewhere besides football games at LRHS, the beach at Anna Maria Island and the Ellenton Outlet Mall.

Spears went places, all right, serving a year in Germany and has just recently returned from a year in Iraq with the 55th Medical Company.

"If somebody had asked me 10 years ago what I'd be doing, I'd never have thought of being in a combat zone in Iraq," she said. "It's been rewarding. I'd go again."