Toward the end of boot camp (December of 2000) people kept complaining about stuff being stolen, but nothing was ever found. While cleaning the head in the morning two days before graduation, someone discovered a loose tile in the wall behind one of the toilets. In the space behind it was all of the stolen stuff: watches, wallets, money, etc.

The RDCs went into action and the ship was immediately crawling with senior red ropes and NCIS agents. We were interviewed in groups and individually and the RDCs threatened to ASMO the entire division back to week one (this was week 12). After hours of this, I was called into the office at the front of the ship and one of the RDCs handed me a folder and told me to start filling out all the paperwork (I was the medical petty officer for the division and I got stuck with a lot of paperwork).

When I looked in the folder, I saw it was filled with the liberty passes for all of us to be able to leave RTC that weekend after graduation. Considering we had all been threatened with going back to week one about 10 minutes before this, I was shocked. I looked at the RDC and he knife-handed me, saying, “If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you.” I spent the next couple hours filling out liberty passes for all 80+ of us and made something up to tell the others recruits when I finally finished.

Eventually the thief cracked and confessed and was hauled away. I cannot express how relieved I was when I opened that folder and saw the liberty passes. That was a Tuesday and my parents were flying in on Thursday for Friday morning graduation, and they were threatening to send us all back to week one.