All in Air Force

Ex-Flight Lt. Graciela Tiscareño-Sato

Graciela quickly understood that her class-mates who travelled to Europe from their high school in northern Colorado, had parents with university degrees. As I virtually walk with this charming, bubbly, expansive woman around her recently developed vegetable plot near San Francisco (“we've had plenty of time with lockdown” she laughs), she recounts how she and her four siblings are children of Mexican immigrants for whom further education was not part of the game-plan. But thanks to a school counsellor who mentored her to a place at the University of California at Berkeley, and the counsellor's U.S. Air Force husband who helped her earn an Air Force scholarship, Graciela did get to travel to Europe... and many other places too…

Wing Commander Caroline

A chance encounter with a French Air Force officer at a career's workshop, a chat with a fireman friend and a car accident were pivotal moments in Wing Commander Caroline's life. “I was doing a physics degree but I also wanted to be a professional violinist. The car accident made me realise that life is short and worth living to the full and the chat with my friend about values and public service together with the encounter at the career's workshop all contributed to my decision to join the military,” she explains…