In Honor of
Army Capt. Maria I. Ortiz

KIA
July 10, 2007

America - Home of the Free... Because of the BRAVE !

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Army Capt. Maria I. Ortiz

KIA
July 10, 2007

40 years old, of Bayamon, Puerto Rico; assigned to Kirk U.S. Army Health Clinic,
Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.; died July 10 in Baghdad of wounds sustained from enemy indirect fire.

Hers is the story of tenacity and sheer determination to serve her
country. Twice, U.S. Army Capt. Maria Ortiz had been called to serve
in Iraq and twice. At the last minute she was told they didn't need
her. So on the third time she volunteered to go right into the eye of
the storm... she ended up in Baghdad.

Her fiancée Juan Casiano says, "She wanted to go there. She wanted to
make a difference."

40-year-old Army Capt. Maria Ortiz of Pennsauken was a military nurse
assigned to the 28th combat support hospital, part of the Army's 3rd
medical command working in Iraq.

"She wasn't only a person that went to Iraq because there was a war,
she was there with a mission," said her twin sister Maria Luisa

Medina. Medina says her sister was a person of conviction. She had a
distinguished military career, serving as chief nurse of general
medicine at the Army Clinic at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. She also
was assigned to the Walter Reed Medical Center, and spent time in
Korea before her deployment to Iraq in September of 2006.

Juan tells us, "Maria was a person of heart, a person that brought joy
to everyone she came across."

A woman of strong Christian faith, she believed going to Iraq to treat
American military personnel wounded in the war was a calling from God.

"And she always told me that's a privilege that she, as a nurse, can
tell wounded soldiers maybe at the last moments of their lives of the
possibility of going to Heaven, to receive the opportunity to receive
God in their hearts," her sister said.

Capt. Ortiz is said to be the first nurse to be killed in the war in
Iraq. She is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a special
ceremony honoring her service.

Her twin sister says, "There's no word to express how proud I am for
what she did." And her fiancée tells us, "Pain is pain, but knowing
the accomplishment and why she did her accomplishments is soothing the soul."

In honor of her service to the Army, officials are considering naming at least part of the new
Walter Reed Medical Center in honor of Capt.

Maria Ortiz and the contribution of nurses in combat zones.

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