FORT CARSON, Colo.—The kindergartners at Patriot Elementary School are busy pasting cutout paper socks in smallest to largest order when the shouts ring out:
“Mr. Carlos. Mr. Carlos.”
The dark-haired man in the Army uniform heads over to one table and crouches, eye level, to 5-year-old Caleb Marlatt who gives him a big smile and holds up his paper.
“Good job. Don’t forget to put your name on it,” the soldier says, moving on to other children who are eager for his attention.
Caleb, watching the other kids mob the soldier, says in a loud whisper, “Mr. Carlos is like my dad. My dad is in Iraq since I was a baby. I want to see him. Mr. Carlos is not my dad. But Mr. Carlos helps you like a dad.”
And the kids, in turn, are helping Mr. Carlos.
Mr. Carlos is Staff Sgt. Carlos Barreto, a 41-year-old career soldier who was brain-injured in a bomb blast In Iraq.
Now he’s an aide at the Fort Carson school, where his Army job is to help the students recite the alphabet, learn to count and recognize written words. In doing so, he’s finding that his own war injuries, including short-term memory problems, are improving.
Barreto is one of 600 soldiers at Fort Carson who are members of the Warrior Transition Unit—soldiers who have been wounded or have other medical problems that prevent them from returning to active duty.
They are provided with medical care and other services such as legal, financial, family and education counseling.
Some of the soldiers in the unit work on post; others work off base in apprenticeships and take classes that prepare them for employment when they leave the Army.
But Barreto is the only one from the local Warrior unit serving as a teacher’s aide.
“We don’t have anyone else here doing that kind of work,” says Lt. Col. Ed Fiske, executive officer of the Warrior Transition Unit. “I think it’s great, especially how he helps kids whose parents are deployed.”
Patriot Elementary, a public school located on base, is overflowing with more than 700 students—including one of Barreto’s sons. Barreto’s wife, Tammy, heard they needed some volunteers and suggested the idea to him.
Barreto approached Patriot Principal Wendy Brihanzel, who thought it was a great idea, and he started early this year. At first, though, there were some problems.
“When he first started he would forget things because of his injury. He would be frustrated,” she says. “But he didn’t give up. He’s made so much progress, and he really helps our overworked teachers. And the students really relate to him with their own dads gone.”
Barreto grew up in Southern California, the second oldest of four children of Mexican immigrants who became American citizens.
It was a great grandfather who died decades before he was born who inspired him to become a soldier. As a kid he was fascinated by a family keepsake—a medal and certificate given to the old general who had fought in the Mexican Revolution with the peasant hero Zapata.
“I joined because of him, and all the old John Wayne Army movies,” Barreto says.
He joined the service straight out of high school in 1985 at age 18, and served in many of the hot spots around the world, including Iraq, and in Operation Desert Storm.
He left the service in 1991, married, worked for UPS, and served in the Nevada National Guard. But he felt like a fish out of water. After talking to his wife, he re-enlisted in 1998.
“I missed the teamwork, the camaraderie serving my country,” he says.
He was deployed to Iraq in late 2005, where he was leader of a personal security team nicknamed the Night Stalkers.
The team provided convoy security for the battalion commander and command sergeant major during visits to construction project sites.
During one mission, he was in a lead vehicle of a caravan driving a gravel, pothole-filled road north of Baghdad.
“There was this bump and I thought—what was that? Another pothole?—until I saw smoke. And then it was like that scene in the ‘Matrix’ where everything is slow motion. I drove another 200 yards, I don’t remember how I controlled the vehicle. Luckily the IED (improvised explosive device) just hit the rear seat.”
Fellow soldiers treated him in the field, removing shrapnel from the back of his head and neck.
He returned to the States in December 2006, suffering from constant headaches, neck pain and insomnia. Tests found that he had a vertebrae injury and a brain injury much like that caused by shaken baby syndrome.
The injury left him with short-term memory problems and difficulty with multitasking, he says. His neck injury caused physical problems, too.
“I used to be able to go backpacking, but I can’t do that anymore,” he says.
He was eventually transferred to Fort Carson and was assigned to the Warrior Transition Team in November 2007.
When Barreto started helping out at Patriot Elementary in January, it was to do paperwork and other classroom tasks for the teachers. But he related quickly to the kids.
“He is dependable and great with the kids,” says Jessica Snyder, a Patriot kindergarten teacher. “Recently we had a birthday party in class for a little girl who had never had her dad home for her birthday. Carlos was there, and she was thrilled.”
And the more he’s worked with the kindergarten and first-grade students, the more his own cognitive abilities have sharpened.
“I had trouble keeping up with adult conversations, but I could keep up with the kids,” he says.
One student, in particular, is glad Barreto is around—his son C.J., a first-grader. (Barreto’s other son, Devin, is 1.)
“It’s cool when he is here. He helps me with reading. I can see him more,” C.J. says.
Barreto has three years before he can retire from the military with 25 years, and he wants to return to duty.
“I’d like to go to Afghanistan,” he says.
But he is also being tugged in another direction. His work at Patriot has made him think about a teaching career.
For now, though, he loves what he is doing.
“I like helping the kids. It’s like helping out the other parents who are deployed. Some of these kids are pretty sad sometimes, and you just want to make them happier.”
And, he says, “The kids are therapy for me.”
Barreto was honored for his teacher’s aide work recently at a Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 school board meeting.
Superintendent Cheryl Walker called him inspirational. And as Brihanzel, the Patriot principal, told his story, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
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Fort Carson:
Patriot Elementary School:
