Sergeant Amanda Bowen is no gambler, but Lady Luck was definitely on her side when she pulled a name and number off a list, called it and hit the jackpot. "I have no luck whatsoever," Bowen says. "For something like this to happen to me is huge!"
Bowen's referring to the fact that her very first day on the job as a new Recruiter, she put someone in the Army. "It's unheard of," says her boss and Station Commander, Sergeant First Class Brent Koenig. "I am so surprised."
So, how did she do it' According to Bowen, she just picked-up a list of student names from Maroa-Forsyth High School in Forsyth, Illinois, and started dialing. "The students were seniors at the school, and when I called this one kid he told me right away, he'd been thinking about joining the Army for quite a while." Words like that are the elusive "ace in the hole" to a recruiter, so Bowen knew she had to encourage the young man to meet her.
Steve Arreguin, a 17 year old native of Forsyth, Illlinois, met Bowen with his mother at the Decatur Recruiting Station and sat down to talk. "He ended-up filling out the paperwork to join, " says Bowen, "and after that, we had to find him a job, arrange for him to take the ASVAB, a physical and swear the Oath of Enlistment." Bowen says it didn't all happen in one day, but from start to finish, it took just about a week. "It was a very quick process."
Bowen's first enlistee and Future Soldier, heads to Basic Combat Training in June 2011, and will eventually attend school to become a Combat Engineer. She says she'll follow Arreguin's progress because it's important to her. "When I went in the Army, recruiters didn't spend much time with their Future Soldiers. I plan to keep track of his successes."
In return, Sergeant Bowen will be tracked by her Station Commander, SFC Koenig. "She came to our station with a good, positive attitude, and we're all expecting an awful lot from her," he says. Bowen knows after successfully putting someone into the Army her first day on the job, she'll be watched very closely. "I know everyone is going to expect a lot from me."
Bowen's plan of attack to continue her streak of good fortune, is to get out in the community every day and talk to people about the Army whether she's in uniform or not. "I'll make phone calls, drive around neighborhoods, parks, the mall; talk to everyone I can." She knows she has to work hard and plans to do whatever it takes. With everything she's already accomplished, Sergeant Amanda Bowen knows the stakes are high, but if she puts as much effort into every potential recruit as she did with her very first, the odds are definitely in her favor.
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