What do you get when you cross Girl Scouts with Marines? Some of the most empowered and confident Brownie and Junior Scouts of Stewart Manor’s Troop 1127. Marine Corps recruiter, Sergeant Victor Altamirano of the Hempstead Recruiting Station recently visited the third and fourth-grade Scouts at their meeting to teach some basic marching instructions and introduce three local Marine Corps poolees who are awaiting deployment to bootcamp.
Altamirano, along with his poolees, Matthew Nardone, Claudio Flores and Gianfranco Perez, delivered a mini-bootcamp workout to the Scouts. The Scouts did pushups, situps, speed drills, planks and even raced against their three Marine candidates for the official title of winner. Scouts won; Marines had to run laps for losing.
Altamirano also thanked the Scouts for their continuous community involvement, including their “Operation Kuwait Christmas”, which the Scouts packed more than a dozen care packages to send to their friend and Floral Park resident, Manny Rodriguez.
As a surprise to the Scouts, Rodriguez also stopped by the meeting to thank the girls for their generous care packages and their moral support throughout his deployment. He thanked the Scouts with special green and black “rainbow” patches from his unit’s deployment.
Rodriguez’s Army reserve status was activated in December 2013 and he deployed to Kuwait. He previously served as the American Legion post commander of Post 1033. Rodriguez returned home from deployment in August.
