Republished from Oct. 10, 2011, Air Force Times:
Staff Sgt. Robert Gutierrez just wanted to save his friends and get out alive so he could meet his new baby.
Since then, a whole lot more has happened.
Gutierrez, a combat controller, has met President Obama in the Oval Office. He traveled to ground zero in New York with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told his story to hundreds of people at the Air Force Association's fall conference and announced the combat controller will receive the Air Force Cross.
Life, Gutierrez said, has "obviously changed for the better" since he was gravely wounded during a firefight two years ago in Afghanistan.
"My life has always been good anyways," he said in a Sept. 20 interview. "I get paid to do this for a living. I love my family. I'm very thankful for everything I have, you know. ... I'm honored and thankful that they would even [say], 'Hey, we're going to send Sergeant Gutierrez to go represent the Air Force and represent AFSOC.'"
Gutierrez was serving with an Army Special Forces unit Oct. 5, 2009, when the team was pinned down by enemy gunfire.
The fighting was intense — and prolonged. He eventually took a bullet himself — to the chest — and a medic jabbed a syringe into his collapsed lung. Still, he kept calling in airstrikes.
Giving up was never an option, he said.
"You sit there and you think about it, and you're like, OK, well, the mission has still got to get done, regardless," he said. "So you focus on that. You focus on the rest of your team, because everybody relies on each other. And I could never be a burden to any of them. So if I would have just allowed myself to sit there and die, then I would just become a burden."
Gutierrez also focused on returning to his wife, who was pregnant with their first child. He passed out only after he called in helicopters for his wounded comrades and made sure the others had air cover. He walked a mile to the helos.
Besides the collapsed lung, the battle left Gutierrez with two broken ribs, blown eardrums and an assortment of other injuries. He contracted four infections in the following weeks. It took 18 months for him to recover.
Surviving the attack proved to Gutierrez that he can do anything.
"There is no limit to anything. You can be injured, you can be on your dying bed, but you can get up," he said. "[Now] nothing can really stop me. I'm going to keep going. ... It changes your life, but it's good, for the better."
