FLORIDA MOM MAGAZINE - November '08 - Sarah PittmanBy: Michele Gillis Photos: Carrie-Lynn Smith
 Sarah Pittman, 26, puts family first. As a mom in the military, sometimes the uncertainty of your schedule can be unnerving, but she and her husband have worked it out in a very unique way.
Pittman and her husband, Jedidiah, are on opposite schedules to ensure care of their daughter. She works from 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday and then also has overnight duty twice a month on a Sunday. “My husband’s usual work schedule is 4-11 p.m., but he was deployed earlier this month so he went to the day shift for a few weeks,” she said. “We never see each other. I see him for five minutes when I come home and relieve him and on the weekends. He watches my daughter during the day while I’m at work and I watch her at night while he’s at work. We don’t want to put her in daycare. It’s a schedule we worked out with our supervisors to keep it that way.”
Pittman’s husband is a flight mechanic in the Coast Guard. They have an 11-month old daughter, Zoey. She has been in the U.S. Coast Guard as a yeoman for six years. She has been stationed at the Coast Guard Sector Jacksonville in Mayport for almost two years. “I do payroll and personnel,” said Pittman. “I do all the pay transactions and all the disbursement of personnel. When we get travel orders I’m the one who writes up the order, fax off for their pay and I send them places. That’s my main job, but I do a lot of other things on the side of that.”
She’s been in the Coast Guard for six years. As a yeoman, she has been the housing officer for the area and provided resources for all the new personnel coming in on leased housing or area directions. “I also did our Basic Allowance for Housing survey,” she said. “That is the money that we get to live on based on the economy. The survey takes quite a few months. We have to go through and check all the rental areas and how much they are charging for rent. That’s how we get paid our BAH. We coordinate that with the U.S. Navy here.”
Before she became a yeoman, Pittman worked with the Public Works Department of the Coast Guard.
“For the first six months, I worked with the Public Works Department and we just painted, re-did floors and buildings and built an entire storage shed from the cement up. I did a lot of construction jobs,” she said.
She knew she wanted to be a yeoman when she joined the Coast Guard. She did on-the-job training until she knew her job well enough to be assigned as a yeoman. “I’m married to another Coasty and the majority of yeomen are land-based,” said Pittman. “We wanted to start a family and I wanted to stay co-located with my husband. That’s the number one rate you can co-locate with anyone in the military. Anywhere that my husband would go, there would be a spot for me.”
They’ve been in Jacksonville for a year and a half. “This was our first pick, so we got a good spot,” she said. “We like the weather here. We’ll move again in two and a half years.”
Since Jedidiah works at Cecil Air Field in the Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) on the Westside, they live at Trails at Bent Creek. “His squadron is the one that has 50-caliber machine guns and they run down the drug boats that are trying to get into the country,” said Pittman. “The Coast Guard has operations that pick out people that they suspect are running drugs and then they send out the helicopter and they draw a line in the water with the machine guns and say ‘Do not pass this line.’ If they do, the Coast Guard is allowed to shoot the motor out of their boat. They are dead in the water, so a Coast Guard ship will come pick them up and take them back to Cuba (or wherever they are from) so they can’t get into the country. The Coast Guard gets the drugs as a claim and then they burn them.” 
On his mission, Pittman’s husband will be on helicopter, which is being attached to a ship on the West Coast. “They are going to be doing drug runner operations for the next 45 days,” she said. “It’s the first time he’s been deployed since we’ve been here. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when. They gave us two weeks notice. I had to hurry up and find a babysitter. It was very stressful, but it worked out.”
Growing up, Pittman had a difficult childhood. She wanted to go to college, but funds were just not available to her, so she decided to join the Coast Guard, which turned out to be sort of a savoir to her. “It helped me to better myself from where I began,” said Pittman. “I had no hopes of financing college. I was an honor roll student, but I couldn’t apply for financial aid, because I didn’t have all the requirements they needed. I’m seven credits away from my associate’s degree in accounting. I’m working on it, but it takes awhile when you have a baby and are moving. I’ve moved five times in six years.”
Working for the Coast Guard means something special to Pittman. “It means getting up everyday, going to work and doing the best job I can for the people who are actually out fighting for your country. It’s a service position that I am in. I don’t actually go out there and fight, save people or stop people from coming into the country, but I support those people who do.”
She is from Washington State, but was in New Orleans when she joined the Coast Guard. “I now know it was God’s plan to get me to my husband,” she said. “I then moved to Oregon with the Coast Guard, where I met my husband. Then we were transferred to Jacksonville.”
Pittman wants to complete her associate’s degree and hopefully earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “I want to become a warrant officer,” she said. “I have to take a test and get promoted to an E6 or E7. Then I have to put in my package to become a warrant officer. You have to have a pretty good record and good marks. Then I would go on to be a shop supervisor. Currently, I am a part-time supervisor when they need me.” 
Since they are so far away from home, a support system is sometimes hard to find. They did move her husband’s sister, Zhennah, to Jacksonville and she helps when she can. “We work around her schedule because she does work a lot of hours,” said Pittman. “If Zhennah is not available, I have a good friend and neighbor Dana that will watch Zoey once in a while for us too. She is great friend.”
As a mom, dealing with the uncertainty of the military can be quite stressful. “At any moment, they can be like, we need you to go here,” she said. “Then you have to find somewhere to leave your baby if you have to work or your husband has to work. That is the hardest part now that I am a mom. Before, it wasn’t so hard, you just left. Now, you have to find out who is going to take care of your child, especially with no support system. There is also a long wait for the daycare here. They don’t even tell you how long it is, they just say, put your name on the list and we’ll call you when it’s available.”
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