“Motivating Young People to become Better Citizens”

That’s the motto of the High School Army Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps program. And more so at Crossroads High School, just outside of Colorado Springs. To some, it’s an elective where you get a year of P.E, and maybe have some fun. To other’s its a prep class for the military. But to some, the select few, it becomes a lifestyle.

Cadet Major Luis Lopez is a prime example. Not a native of the colorado area, he hails from Mexico City, and has transcended many state boundaries since then. He didn’t arrive at the base of these snowy peaks until his sophmore year, he is in the graduating class of 2011.

Cadet Major Luis Lopez’s last high school was Redwood Mountain High, somewhere near Los Angeles California. the middle child of a Mexican Immigrant Family, Luis Lopez is an American citizen who started off as a creative soul. but recent budget cuts in his state meant less funding for the arts, and he could find solace only in the precision of his unit’s drill team.

The Redwoods High NJROTC Drill Team was in line for a state trophy, when his family got involved with the wrong people, and sought refuge in a suburb of the Springs. Lopez was a fitness nut, winning three individual medals at local competitions. Everymorning he would take his weighted rucksack, and jog to his school.

Now a senior, he has earned five more individual medals, as well as two trophies for the Physical Fitness team, and five for the Armed Drill Team, which he christened “The Crossroad Guards”. The drill team was his life, he started spinning pipes from his uncle’s welding shop, graduate to balsa wood rifles, and then spend countless hours spinning a black daisy M1903 Replica.

As much of a “nut” as he was called, he did have a little time for his hobbies. Drawing, Listening to music, Writing, and of course… Girls. He laughed at how so many underclassmen fell head over heels for a girl, who would dump them not two weeks later. He had a taste for white girls, which his parents abhorred, but he never got serious. His friends could never keep an accurate track of whom he was with. Until, of course, he met Her.

She had just moved in from Georgia. A redhead with curves to kill. Now, Lopez here, had two secret “preferences”, that few knew about, and that was red hair, and curves. She appeared so sociable, talking with her church group that pushed her into the social jungle at Crossroads high, but in her, he saw a lonely soul. Possibly one of those souls that would rather read a book on a sunday morning, than party on saturday night.

It was that week, he picked up his guitar for the first time in four years.