Instructing army students to make sure they check their parachutes while they’re up in the sky, seeing the world and humans as tiny little ants, and then jumping off a plane and feeling the world go upside down, falling down to touch the flat surface.
This moment represents the life of one of our Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps teachers: Rolando Sarabia or First Sergeant Sarabia. Mr. Sarabia is a retired U.S. Army helicopter mechanic and electrician who took care of all electrical and avionics such as radios and navigation systems as well as any armament systems such as rockets, missiles and machine guns. Mr. Sarabia had this position for about 15 years at different levels: from working on helicopters to training new soldiers. He even led a company of 100-120 soldiers that worked with helicopters.
Throughout his years in the army he has taught up to 1,300 individual soldiers. He made sure they got a good experience in upper level management and ensured they were ready to teach other individuals.
As a teacher here, there is always laughter going around in the classroom. It feels like a family having a great time. He teaches students to march and to represent our school.
By joining the army, Mr. Sarabia has received many benefits such as the Montgomery GI Bill, which provides educational benefits to eligible service members and veterans for various programs: including college, vocational training, and apprenticeships, as well he gets a stipend every month to be able to live off of.
He didn’t have any plans through his first 3 years of high school until his senior year when he planned on graduating and joining the army. However, he couldn’t join the army since he had braces and when entering the army a person is not allowed to have braces while doing basic training. But later he got them removed and was able to join the army.
When joining the army a person must pass a background check, and have a physical and mental evaluation. If you fail one of them or have a certain health condition, then you can’t join. This means only 2 to 3% of the civilian population would qualify to join the army.
While being in the army, Mr. Sarabia has gotten the chance to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Germany, Spain, Hawaii, the United Arab Emirates, and many more places. His deployments to combat were usually 60-90 days, the longest being 150 days, and his non-combat deployments were about 6 months to a year.
Being deployed to different countries comes with many lows and highs. One of them being that Mr. Sarabia had to spend long periods of time without seeing his family. Being far away from them, even if his family got to live on bases that were close by, made him feel like he wanted to be closer to them.
Now that he’s retired, he likes teaching young people to be productive individuals. It is always rewarding to him. They depend on their parents but he likes to maintain a connection with each of the individuals and build a connection with them. He had heard about JROTC through people that had retired before him, and when he found out that he would still have the same type of concept training, it pushed him to do JROTC.
As well as being a father of three daughters and a son, outside of school he likes doing lots of outdoor activities since he lives close to a river. He likes to go fishing, riding quads, going for hikes or going to the lake with his family.
“A lot of people have a misconception of you if you’re in the army: all you do is train and run and jump over obstacle courses, but it’s a career,” says Mr. Sarabia
The idea of having a First Sergeant who teaches students to become a part of our community, the way that he fills the class with laughter, and as a student who takes JROTC, it has allowed me to have a perspective of how the Army works and have a great time learning all of the marches and formations.
Audree • Nov 7, 2025 at 1:19 pm
This is a very nice article. 🙂