For Daniel Lopez-Guerrero, serving in the United States Army is more than serving his country. It’s about representing something bigger than himself.
The South Florida native, who is stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) and resides in Lacey, has spent nearly half of his life in the armed forces, enlisting in the Army in February of 1999. Now 51, Lopez-Guerrero is closing in on his 26-year mark and is set to retire in April of 2026.
With the vast majority of his years in the rearview, he has taken time to reflect on the journey that has taken him to South Korea, South Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Virginia and Nevada, among other places.
“I pity those that haven’t served. It’s difficult to articulate, but it’s just one of those things that you have to go through to really understand,” Lopez-Guerrero said. “I hope that my legacy is that people thought I was a good soldier, a good officer and a good human being. I hope I left the Army better than when I first got there.”
Lopez-Guerrero, his wife of 30 years and their children moved nine times in a 20-year span during his service. The Army brat lifestyle wasn’t one that he initially sought out after high school, however. He spent three years studying chemistry in college and hoped to attend medical school.
He eventually joined the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps while in college, looking for some sort of structure as well as funding for education. Lopez-Guerrero was a longtime Boy Scout as a youth and enjoyed the idea of the uniforms and structure.
“The part that got me was the uniforms and the structure and being part of something that’s bigger than yourself. I grew up not poor but not affluent at all,” he said. “When I was 7 or 8 years old, going to Burger King was a luxury. So the thought of traveling all over the world and seeing different things was quite irresistible.”
About three years into his enlistment, Lopez-Guerrero was awarded the Green To Gold Scholarship, which allowed him to go to school full-time to pursue a degree while earning a commission as an army officer. In total, he spent about six years in the Army Reserve as a commissioned officer, but he was a casualty of “The Great Recession” in 2008.
“I spent eight of the most miserable months of my life unemployed. Both theaters of operation in Iraq and Afghanistan were still pretty heavy,” Lopez-Guerrero said. “They were looking for people, and I came back on active duty in 2009, and here we are. At this time next year, I’ll be in full-blown retirement mode.”
He is currently the division chief of operations for the 104th Training Division on JBLM, running a staff of about 12 people while running operations for a division of about 5,000 soldiers across 30 states. With retirement quickly approaching, Lopez-Guerrero is not quite sure what the world of unknowns known as civilian life will hold.
“I know plenty of people who are retired, and they all have independently confirmed that the first seven or eight months are weird. You’re in this weird stage because you’re not wearing a uniform anymore. Your environment totally changes,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. What I do know is I’d like to not be in charge of anything. I just want to be in charge of myself right now.”
Lopez-Guerrero recently joined the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association (CVMA) and has begun to mingle with people with similar experiences while helping other veterans through fundraisers. As he prepares to transition back to civilian life, he described his CVMA friends as a “safety net” that will guide him through the post-military period.
“When I am amongst my people and we are together, doesn’t matter what service, we all speak the same language. We all act the same. It feels like home,” he said. “The perspective is, how often in day-to-day life do you get put into a life-and-death situation with your closest friends where they continuously demonstrate that they’re never going to abandon you? That’s very difficult, if not almost impossible, to find in the civilian world.”
Lopez-Guerrero’s proudest accomplishment over his nearly 26 years in the military is beyond anything fulfilled while in uniform.
“Doing it for [almost] 30 years and not losing my wife and kids. That’s the thing I’m proudest of,” he said. “The fact that my kids and my wife are very proud of me, and I’m very proud of them. We go away and people shoot at us, and they have to stay back. My wife has had to continue to run the household minus me.”
