In 2007, retired U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Brian Vargas was caught in a near-fatal blast when enemy combatants blew up a 500-round ammunition drum in Iraq's so-called Triangle of Death. Ten surgeries and nearly 200 other medical procedures later, the San Francisco native has taken a far less deadly job as a constituent services representative in Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D-Calif.) Hayward district office.
"I left my body," Vargas said of the moments following the explosion in an interview with his campus paper, Berkeley News. "I was floating and could see everything. There was no pain. Euphoria can barely describe it. I felt God's presence... But I remember feeling, 'Not now.'"
Vargas, who was 19 years old at the time of the injury, medically retired from the Marines in 2009. But the husband and dog-father-of-three hasn't let retirement slow him down.
After his discharge, Vargas graduated from Diablo Valley College with an associate's degree in sociology before earning a bachelor's degree in social work from the University of California Berkeley.
"Higher education also is worth living for," Vargas said. "I'll forever be a [Berkeley] Bear, just as much as I'll forever be a Marine."
