MCAS Miramar Deployment Readiness Coordinator Loves Connecting with Marine Families
By Betty Snider | HQMC MF COMMSTRAT
Shondra Jerabek didn’t realize that being married to a Sailor would set her on course for a rewarding career with the Marine Corps.
In her role as a deployment readiness coordinator at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Jerabek helps families prepare for their Marine to be away for an extended period. Assisting with family readiness has been a big part of her life since 1998.
She became a Navy ombudsman, a volunteer who serves as a liaison between a command’s leadership and its families. In 2011, she ended up helping Marine families during a deployment when they had trouble reaching the family readiness organizer (FRO) assigned to their unit.
That experience sparked an idea. “I just spent 60 hours a week volunteering in this capacity,” Jerabek said. “Maybe I can make this a job.”
Two years later, she was hired as a FRO at Miramar and worked there and with a squadron until she left during a round of budget cuts in 2018. She missed the work terribly and happily returned when a position opened in 2020.
“What I truly love is the opportunity to mentor spouses, especially spouses who have no experience with the military,” Jerabek said. She enjoys building relationships with the spouses and the Marines who are often stressed and overwhelmed with training.
She calls her office a rank-free zone and invites Marines in to have a seat at her big table “just to sit down and chat and make them feel human again.”
It’s often during those casual conversations that she hears about things the Marines are facing in their personal lives and suggests a Marine Corps Community Services resource that could help.
A Marine wants to buy a new vehicle or maybe a house. She asks if they have visited a personal financial management specialist. A Marine mentions he is having communication issues with his spouse. She will suggest a visit to Community Counseling or Family Advocacy or Marine Corps Family Team Building (MCFTB).
“We act as a bridge to so many other services,” Jerabek said. “In our experience, there are so many resources available to the Marines and families that I think sometimes it gets overwhelming. We can feed the information to them slowly.”
The recommendations from Jerabek and other readiness coordinators can be more effective than posters or social media. “We’re able to connect with them, and they trust us,” she said.
When preparing for a deployment, Jerabek walks Marines through everything they need to take care of before leaving such as forwarding their mail, making sure monthly bills are on auto pay, and finding someone to care for a pet.
For spouses, Jerabek coordinates a series of classes with MCFTB and the Navy that start six months before a deployment. Topics include readiness binder building, stress management, long-distance communication, time management, and goal setting.
“My real true goal is helping them create a support group in the unit,” she said. “Nobody understands going through a deployment like the people who are going through it with you.”
Jerabek said she remains close friends with a spouse she met during one of her husband’s first deployments. “You build your military family that is going to be there to support you.”
Jerabek uses her own experience to prepare spouses for one of the toughest parts of a deployment. Communication can be an issue when Marines are at sea due to operational security or technology lapses.
“I get messages when spouses don’t hear from their Marines for hours,” she said. “I tell them to try not to worry until it’s been weeks. No news is good news.”
Throughout her career, Jerabek has helped thousands of Marine families, but one situation stands out.
One of the units she supports was on a difficult deployment when a Marine’s father died. The commanding officer did everything he could to get the Marine home for the funeral.
To complicate the travel plans, it was Christmastime. The Marine flew commercial and arrived at an airport in Djibouti, a small country in East Africa. His flight was canceled, and the young Marine was told he could not get a flight out for another 20 hours. He also could not stay in the airport.
The Marine’s distraught mother called Jerabek. “I got on the phone, making calls to people who know people who know people,” she said.
She finally connected with a Marine on a base in Djibouti who picked the young Marine up from the airport and took him back to the base where they waited until it was time for the flight.
Months later, when the unit returned from the deployment, the young Marine’s family sought Jerabek out at the homecoming and wrapped her in a giant group hug.
“You don’t know how much you helped us and alleviated our fears,” the mother told her. “It was overwhelming that you were on our side.”
While that was an extreme case for the deployment readiness coordinator, Jerabek said she was simply doing her job. “But to have them come back at homecoming and hug me and tell me how important it was, it was validating. This is why I do my job.”