Photograph by Jacquelyn Ramseyer

U.S. Army Reservist Master Sgt. Alan Wheeler, a public safety officer for Sunnyvale, stands at alert to be sent to serve during the United States' military actions in Afghanistan.




High-Alert

Alan Wheeler says he's two years away from retiring from the army

By Erin Mayes

Master Sgt. Alan Wheeler joined the U.S. Army Reserve five years ago because his involvement in the National Guard kept him away from his family for months at a time--much too long, his wife says.

Now, there's a chance that the Campbell resident could be going on another long trip, this one involving military action being waged in Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in America.

Wheeler, 53, started his career in the Army as a 19-year-old Marine and was sent to Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. After the war ended, he took a 17-year break from the Army, working for eight years for the Campbell Police Department and moving on to work for the city of Sunnyvale as a public safety officer, where he's been for 20 years.

Fifteen years ago, Wheeler became a National Guardsman after he joined the state pistol team. Pistol teams train their members in small arms marksmanship and safety training and are often affiliated with military organizations.

During his tenure as a corporal in the National Guard, he and his unit were sent to Los Angeles when riots erupted after a Simi Valley jury acquitted four police officers of criminal charges in the 1991 Rodney King beating.

Also in 1991, Wheeler's unit was sent to New York for four months as backfill for a unit that was sent to the front lines during Desert Storm.

"This was much more of a disruption to the family," Wheeler says.

His wife, Joe, asked him to find a group he could join that was less likely to be activated, so in 1996 he joined the U.S. Army Reserve and was eventually promoted to master sergeant. His new unit is the 386th Military Intelligence Battalion.

Although the battalion is not on a list to be mobilized, it has been placed on high alert, with a two-hour notice, Wheeler says.

"It's not that I'm gone in two hours," he says. "They'd probably ask me to be there at 6 the next morning."

The battalion's commander would have 72 hours to mobilize the unit in Fort Lewis, Wash. Once in Fort Lewis, the battalion would stay there for about two weeks for validation, which Wheeler says is the period of time during which units need to show they can do the job they will be sent to complete.

Wheeler says it's possible that only a few reservists from his battalion could be sent off, because each battalion consists of many companies, each of which specializes in particular areas, such as linguistics.

"Unless they do the whole battalion, I'm safe," he says, although he acknowledged that he could be sent to Korea, where his company's marry-up unit is. Marry-up units are on active duty, and if they are activated, their counterparts must be sent to back them up.

Wheeler is not concerned about being on the front lines because his responsibilities in the reserve include maintaining equipment rather than doing battle.

So far, Wheeler's duties as a reservist have been the usual training, one weekend a month and two weeks a year, which Joe is willing to accept.

The reservist says that even though Joe won't let on, she's concerned about him being deployed.

"She's nervous," Wheeler says. "She tries not to say anything, but it's there."

He said he's not scared for himself and that if he didn't have a family, he would have absolutely no problem being activated.

If Wheeler can avoid being activated for another two years, Joe will have nothing to fear, because then Wheeler will have retired and the couple will be able to travel the country like they've been planning to do for some time.

The two have been married eight years and with Joe's two daughters, Sheila and Nona, live in the Campbell home Wheeler has owned since 1978.

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