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All-women medic team in Tucson return from mission helping Afghan refugees

Posted at 10:32 AM, Mar 28, 2022
and last updated 2022-03-28 13:32:20-04

TUCSON, AZ — As families fled Afghanistan seeking refuge six months ago, three Arizona women answered the call for a very important mission.

Out of all the medics at Morris Air National Base in Tucson, Staff Sgt. Nora Mena, Senior Airman Alicea Owen, and Senior Airman Jasmine Brower stepped up alongside other national guardsmen across the country to help provide medical assistance to refugees at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

"I feel proud of all of us," said Owen.

“We were operating all times throughout the day," said Brower. “I think the most we’d see was 200 people within a day."

The team worked for six months, working through the holidays, and creating a bond with one another, until all 6,000 refugees were cared for.

“I was so proud of them because they’re my daughter's age and they were doing something so significant," said Mena.

“They are just people who were in a war zone who need help and need to get away from it and it’s as simple as that and they needed help, so we were there to help them," said Owen.