Elizabeth Perez-Halperin vividly remembers Oct. 12, 2000, as ?the day that changed my life forever.?
That was when terrorists blew a hole in the U.S. destroyer Cole docked off Yemen, killing 17 sailors. One of those victims was her closest friend from Navy boot camp, Lakiba Nicole Palmer of San Diego.
The attack, coupled with her growing belief that America?s demand for oil helps fund terrorists and their allies, has committed Perez-Halperin to new missions since she left the Navy in 2005.
Now 33, Perez-Halperin has launched a San Diego-based startup company called GC Green that secures funding from public and private sources to train and connect veterans to jobs in the green energy field. For example, filling a need for energy auditors to help homeowners save on utility bills.
Palmer continues to motivate her effort.
?She has to live beyond that day,? Perez-Halperin said.
Perez-Halperin also champions energy security by promoting alternatives to oil. That?s what brought her to Sacramento recently to urge the California Air Resources Board to continue a controversial regulation aimed at forcing oil companies to reduce the carbon content in transportation fuels.
It was brief, but riveting testimony about the loss of her friend and her own father, a veteran of the first Gulf War.
?You can imagine the frustration that I and so many others felt when we learned that our addiction to oil was helping to fund the very same terrorist organization that had attacked the USS Cole,? she said, pausing to compose herself.
Some veterans don?t see it that way. Willie Galvan, a retired Korean War-era veteran and state commander of the nonprofit American GI Forum of California, wrote a recent column critical of the air board, arguing that more regulations put the country?s energy security and businesses at further risk, especially with the economy so wobbly.
?There are those who imply that the only threat to adequate energy supplies is reliance on imported crude. But they conveniently neglect to consider that California?s regulatory structure has increasingly been the cause of declining in-state production and rising imports,? Galvan wrote.
?As for replacing fossil fuels with alternatives, the reality is they are neither sufficiently available or competitively priced,? he wrote.
Perez-Halperin and others say their primary fears are imports from countries friendly to terrorists and the risk of future war for oil. The long-term solution is to slow those imports by investing in alternative sources, they argue.
Perez-Halperin knows fuel. During her military service she served as an aviation logistics specialist providing combat support for U.S. and NATO forces. In Bahrain and other places she was in charge of transporting and ordering fuel supplies.
?I could not understand why were purchasing fuel from countries that wish us harm. It was a gut check,? she said.
After leaving the Navy, ?I was searching for change and not sure where to find it,? Perez-Halperin said.
She soon discovered her calling.
?I wanted to address the environment, energy and veterans,? she explained.
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/25/attack-on-cole-leads-former-sailor-to-develop/
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