The girl who grew up down the street now carries an M-16 with her everywhere she goes instead of school books and a racquet.
The girl down the street has traded her jeans for B.D.U.s (battle dress uniform), accessorized by a Kevlar vest and helmet.
The girl down the street, who was playing for the school tennis team five years ago, ducks rockets in a bunker and skims over the sand in Black Hawks and rides in convoys across the desert and ships bodies home to their families.
The war has come to our neighborhood, as it has to so many. Holly Segura grew up down the street from our house. Now she is stationed at a base north of Baghdad. It's no longer a war fought by strangers; it's fought by the girl down the street.
The family puts on a brave face; they say they have a feeling she will be all right. But before she left they saw her blood type printed on the side of her helmet, and they knew they weren't sending her off to a youth conference anymore.
A year ago, she was being celebrated as the first Utah woman to graduate from West Point. In March, she was sent overseas. She is quartermaster in charge of a supply distribution center and mortuary affairs. The night before she left for Iraq, while gathered with her family, she began to cry. What if she had to kill someone, she asked. Where would she stand with God?
On this point, her father, Harry, was clear: This is war. If you or your fellow soldiers are in danger, don't hesitate — shoot to kill.
Oh, for the days when the enemy was teenage boys.
Life for the family goes on. There are ball games and church meetings and school to attend and groceries to buy and work to do. But Lt. Segura is always on their minds.
The other day, Holly's mother, Denise, heard on the radio that Holly's base had been bombed and American soldiers had been killed. She ran to the computer and checked her e-mail. Harry and Denise had told her if there was ever an incident to let them know she was OK. Denise found what she was hoping for:
"Action this morning, but I'm OK. More later."
Later, she explained, "I was woken up by the ground shaking. . . . I rolled out of the cot and onto the ground and crawled over to my flak vest and put it on. . . . Then I put my shoes on and grabbed my rifle and dodged out to the bunker . . . we waited and waited . . . another set (of rockets) came. This time it was CLOSE. (We) could hear the thing whiz overhead. We were all falling to the ground when it hit. The people in the bunker where it landed had been given an all-clear, and it landed a few steps out of the bunker. . . . I went back to my room and laid down but couldn't get back to sleep, and then there was a knock at the door."
The man at the door, a mortician, said they had work to do — bodies to process. "I helped carry each one," she wrote. "The crew chiefs saluted each one as they passed. Then we loaded the fourth pouch that was just parts. . . . Then we all stood back and watched the helicopter taxi by and when it did, everyone saluted."
Holly is seeing a side of life she never knew growing up in Utah.
Who knew this awaited the girl down the street.
"There are 800 more stories just like hers that graduated with her," says Harry. "I saw a whole gym full of them. No matter who they are, they are all somebody's child. But somebody's kid has to do it. Somebody's kid has to go."
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesday. Please send e-mail to drob@desnews.com.