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PERSCO NCO provides personnel accountability for entire New Horizons team

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Kelly Ogden
  • 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern)
BELIZE CITY, Belize --  Her adult work life started out at the "happiest place on earth" in Anaheim, California, four years later she entered basic training and started her military career in the United States Air Force.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Arcelia Hauge, an eight year personnelist deployed from 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern), Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, remembers her time at Disneyland fondly, saying that she loved her job as the assistant manager for the stores department at Tomorrow Land and Fantasy Land because the "people were always happy."

Today, her life is as about as far away from Disneyland as one could possibly get.

She's on her very first deployment to Belize as part of the personnel support for contingency operations (PERSCO) team supporting New Horizons Belize, an annual U.S. Southern Command-sponsored exercise focused on training military civil engineers and medical professionals to deploy and conduct joint operations.

Exercise personnel affiliated with New Horizons have been all over the country. The engineers are building structures in Belize City, Belmopan and Hattieville and the medical personnel are conducting engagements in Belize City and in remote locations near Corozal and Punta Gorda.

Hauge has the enormous responsibility of tracking all of these Airmen, Marines, and Soldiers assigned to the New Horizons task force.

"I track all in-bounds, out-bounds, and in country traveling from point-A to point-B," she said.

She is also responsible for handling personnel support requirements, processing administrative reports and working with home station units to facilitate requests that need to be coordinated.

This is her first deployment, so she's excited to expand her job knowledge.

"It's great to see what we do in our area of responsibility," she said.

Hauge is married to Master Sgt. Jon Hauge, 41st Electronic Combat Squadron, Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona.

She says that the best part of being dual-military is that her husband can understand the long hours required of a military member.

When asked how long she plans on staying in the military, Hauge says "I'm a lifer."