FOLSOM, Calif. — Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews was welcomed at the Sacramento airport Friday by a crowd of cheering supporters.
"It's pretty surreal - having have my friends around, makes it feel a little more normal. I haven't been home in... well over a year, year and a half and nothing's really changed," Vargas-Andrews said Sunday.
He came home for the first time in 10 months following the devastating suicide bombing at the Kabul Airport. Vargas-Andrews lost an arm and a leg and has undergone 43 surgeries during his long recovery at Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland.
The 23-year-old will be among those honored at the sold-out Folsom Rodeo show Sunday tonight. The event will also recognize the 13 service members killed during that attack, which includes 23-year-old Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee from Roseville.
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Vargas-Andrews was among the other 18 servicemembers who were injured in the blast. However for him, the emphasis is on the servicemembers who lost their lives in the attack.
"I don't view myself as a hero... I think I'm just a regular person. We're all doing, you know, a very chaotic job at a chaotic place. And fortunately, I was physically prepared to get blown up. It's the best way I can put it," Vargas-Andrews said.
He said that his physical fitness and health was the reason his body was able to sustain the injuries and survive.
"It kind of sounds like a joke, but it's really not," he said.
Vargas-Andrews said that he woke up about six days after the blast happened, and that his medical team told him that he shouldn't have been able to survive his injuries.
"All I could do is I could kind of talk a little bit... I can move my head - you know, my arm, my leg was gone. I've got a million machines and tubes everywhere, and like my left arm, I took some some ball bearings out here to my shoulder and whatnot in my my wrist and I was in a giant cast with like a foam block around it," he said.
After the injuries, Vargas-Andrews said it was hard not being able to do the normal things that he had always done before. However, while he said people might look at his efforts and recovery as amazing, he doesn't see it the same way.
"There's plenty of people who've been in my similar situation or worse. We've had to do the same thing, and it's just something I have to do. I can sit there and cry and, you know, not move on with my life or I can move on in my life," he said.
Now that he's back home, Vargas-Andrews intends to live his life the same way as before. He intends to continue weightlifting and shooting, and he's considered competing in the Paralympics. Another goal of his is to open his own gym.
"I'm missing half my organs and half my limbs, and, you know, I hope I can show people there's no reason not to go be successful in your own life. There's no reason not to go do the things that you want to do. I'm still doing things I want to do," he said.
The non-profit Warfighter Overwatch helped organize the events that will be honoring Vargas-Andrews and the other servicemembers. It's important event, because it keeps those servicemembers in people's memories.
"It's very easy for attention to be brought and the the support of communities and whatnot to be strong in the beginning, but you know, it dies off very quickly. And you know those 13 families and the friends of those 13, they're never going to forget it, you know? Hopefully, the rest of world won't either," Vargas-Andrews said.
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