SPIRIT OF AMERICA: Rachel Chiles piloting a Blackhawk chopper

Rachel Chiles grew up flying with her maternal grandfather, Jon VanderLey, so her love of flight started early. That fascination has turned into a career, and the former Oakland resident now pilots Blackhawk helicopters for the U.S. Army.

“I grew up with the belief that we need to give back,” said Chiles, a chief warrant officer 2. “Moreover, I was taught to make the world we live in a better place than the one we inherited. It was those tenets that led me to serve in the U.S. Army. “

Chiles said she didn’t make a purposeful decision to become a helicopter pilot; it was more of a discovery.

“I knew how I wanted to live my life, and this fit all of the parameters,” she said. “Flying in service of my fellow soldier and my country is a joy and an honor.”

Chiles is a MEDEVAC pilot assigned to Fort Benning, Georgia. For several weeks out of the month, she is on duty three days a week. Being on duty typically means a 15- to 19-hour day, and she is on “ready-up,” which means she can’t leave the airfield.

“In a MEDEVAC situation, the assigned crew has to be in the air in no more than 15 minutes after receiving the call,” she explained. “That sounds like a lot of time, but plotting a grid point, running up a multi-million-dollar aircraft and ensuring we have the equipment necessary for the call, in that amount of time, is a feat.

“We're typically off the ground in five to nine minutes after we get a call,” she said.

She flies two or three times a week, and she likened her on-call duty as “waiting for a call that someone needs help; think of it like fire rescue or EMT.”

When she's not on duty, she is training to maintain proficiency in skill sets that aren't used often in the U.S. This includes practicing one-wheel, two-wheel and pinnacle landings, emergency procedures and limited-power approaches. She also has additional duties that include tracking soldiers and reporting readiness level to higher command.

This current MEDEVAC assignment is a first for Chiles. Prior to Fort Benning, she was assigned to an air assault unit — the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, 3-158 Assault Battalion — in Germany, inserting and extracting ground forces from the battlefield. The unit was tasked with covering NATO missions from Poland to Romania and in between, and she said these missions kept her team on the go constantly, flying to various countries on a rotational basis.

 “Whether it's air assault, MEDEVAC or a VIP unit, all Army aviation revolves around supporting ground forces,” she said.

Chiles attended basic training at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, four years ago. She was born in Orlando, where her family lived until she was 6. In 1991, they moved to Oakland.

Contact Amy Quesinberry Rhode at [email protected].