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Another Shelter Islander in military service comes home

JULIE LANE PHOTO | Family and friends of Jeremy Schmid welcomed him back to Shelter Island Sunday.

It was another welcome home for a Shelter Island serviceman Sunday as family and friends hung out the banner for the return of Air Force Staff Sergeant Jeremy Schmid, 23.

He has most recently been at Lewis-McChord Air Force Base outside of Tacoma, Washington. But in his six years of service, he has served tours of duty in Iraq, Qatar and Haiti and he’s bound for Afghanistan in December. That’s news he broke to his mother, Debra Speeches, only Monday night.

“I told her it’s safer than it used to be,” but there’s still “that motherly instinct” that kicked in and has her concerned, he said.

He joined the Air Force right after graduating from Shelter Island High School because of “a bunch of little factors,” he said.

Looking back, he said the experience has allowed him to see a lot of the world, if not all its prettiest locations.

He spent six months in Iraq from 2008 to 2009. “I enjoyed Iraq,” he said. “We had good people and a good mission.”

Following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, his unit was sent there for 40 days to coordinate the shipment of equipment, food, medical supplies and other goods into the country. His team also assisted other countries that were sending in relief supplies.

“It was an eye-opener,”  SSG Schmid said about his work in the earthquake-ravaged country.

From August 2011 to February 2012, he was deployed to Qatar, where his work in aerial transport involved moving equipment out of Iraq as the United States wound down its role there, sending it back to the United States or to Afghanistan, where that war effort was gearing up.

He doesn’t yet know what he’ll be doing in Afghanistan when he arrives in December, he said. But when his six-year commitment to the Air Force expires, he said, he’ll sign up for another four. At the 10-year mark, he’ll make his decision about whether to stay in the military and comptlete 20 years of service or return to civilian life.

For the moment, he’s enjoying catching up with family and friends on Shelter Island for a couple of weeks before returning to Washington State.

“It’s nice on Shelter Island because everyone does appreciate the military and they show it,” he said about his homecoming.