Courtesy of the Navy Office of Community Outreach
Maritsa Mendoza, a North Las Vegas native, was selected as Sailor of the Week serving aboard USS Vella Gulf, a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser, currently deployed in the Atlantic Ocean. Mendoza is a 2019 Rancho High School graduate. Today, Mendoza serves as a damage controlman.
Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021 | 2 a.m.
A North Las Vegas woman who joined the Navy to travel the globe and pay for college said something she learned back home has helped her succeed in the service.
It’s the principle of “if you start something, you might as well finish it,” said Maritsa Mendoza, a 2019 Rancho High School graduate. “It helps remind me to keep going and keep trying.”
Mendoza was recently named Sailor of the Week serving aboard the USS Vella Gulf, a guided-missile cruiser deployed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Mendoza, who joined the Navy about a year ago, said the honor has been the high point of her time in the service.
Her second-proudest moment was being promoted during basic training to fireman apprentice, she said. “It's the little victories that count,” Mendoza said via a Navy news release.
Mendoza serves as a damage controlman or, as she explains, “the equivalent of a civilian firefighter but on a ship.”
“Our job is to fight casualties such as fire, flooding and more — similar to a firefighter's responsibilities in the civilian world, with the goal of saving the structure, personnel and ourselves,” she said.
Mendoza said she joined the Navy to see new parts of the world and receive financial assistance to attend college and eventually medical school.
For now, her home away from home is a 567-foot-long, 9,800-ton Ticonderoga-class cruiser based out of Norfolk, Va. The ship, which has a crew of some 30 officers and 300 enlisted sailors, is equipped with an array of antiaircraft, antisubmarine, antiship and attack weapons.
But it is the sailors who man such ships that “remain the true source of our naval power,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said in a statement. “Mission one for every sailor remains a ready Navy, a Navy ready to compete today and a Navy ready to compete tomorrow.”
“For 245 years, in both calm and rough waters, our Navy has stood the watch to protect the homeland, preserve freedom of the seas, and defend our way of life,” Gilday said.
Mendoza said serving in the Navy means dedication to the service’s core values of honor, courage and commitment.
“Having honor and respect in what we do. Having the courage to step out of our comfort zones with family and leaving home. The courage to make them proud and the courage to go forward and support our Navy's goals. Last but not least, having the commitment again, to finish what has been started, personally, as well as Navy-wide,” Mendoza said.
