The Littlest “Soldier”

The Battle

When veterans get together at the American Legion, you can expect to hear all kinds of stories about their time in the service, a lot of them humorous tales, others not so. And some will grudgingly tell you about their combat experiences, admitting to the gnawing fear most men feel in combat.

Army veteran Francisco “Frank” (aka “Sarge”) Ortiz has his own reflections on the time he spent in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But, at the same time, he’ll share that of all the firefights he was in, nothing had him more fearful than when his daughter, Ellie Maria, got sick.

Ellie was a typical baby… smiling, jovial and cute, but by the time she’d reached half a year she started having diarrhea with everything she consumed. It took a while for the doctors to pinpoint the cause. But, after a CT scan, a tumor was discovered in her tummy.

What a scary and stressful diagnosis for any parent to face! And, it was all the more compounded when little Ellie was transferred to a specialty hospital in Fontana, an hour and a half away, requiring a lot of back and forth driving for Frank and his wife, Jackie, who still had to look after their other two kids at home in Indio… Cali, 10 and Frankie, 4.

While the tumor turned out to be malignant, the gifted surgeons were able to get it all and today, Ellie is cancer free as she gets ready to celebrate her 3rd birthday on September 2nd.

“She showed a lot of bravery back then,“ says Frank, “and continues to amaze us all with her resiliency and upbeat attitude.” It would, of course, be a sure bet to say she inherited those traits from her Dad.

The Back Story

Ellie’s father came from the “school of hard knocks”. Frank had a tough guy attitude when he was younger, hanging out with the wrong crowd, engaging in vandalizing vehicles and even petty theft which led to his being arrested a couple of times. However, as a juvenile, all he got was a stern admonition from the Court as punishment.

Then, he got kicked out of high school, kept getting into trouble, and eventually got grazed by a bullet when riding in a car stolen by a friend.

“It was at that moment, I knew I was living a stupid life and making stupid decisions,” Frank relates. “If I was going to die, I wanted it to to be for a bigger cause than something with no meaning.” And so, the next day when watching TV, he saw the “Be All You Can Be” U.S. Army commercial which prompted him to pick up a phone and call the local recruiting station.

Army Strong

Before you know it, the Army had him enrolled in an Adult High School program which enabled him to receive his diploma and get inducted into the service.

The rest, of course, is history. He saw combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq, rose to the rank of Sergeant and would have made it a career except for a compelling need to take care of family back home.

Years later, he found himself the father of four girls and a boy and now, the owner of two barber shops… one in Indio and another in Bermuda Dunes aptly named Freedom Barber Shop.

But how did a guy with his background end up in the barber biz? “Well,” he says with a shrug, “it’s just something I did in the Army. First, I cut my own hair. Then, other guys asked me to cut theirs and it just spring-boarded to where it seemed a logical transition.

Hanging Tough

One wouldn’t have expected Francisco Javier Ortiz to have turned his life around like he did, but thanks to Army discipline and training, he acquired a self assurance to do what he had to do to make it. So, it’s no wonder then that little Ellie’s also a fighter and survivor just like him.

Being around her, one simply can’t help but notice her bubbly persona and infectious smile, amazed at how fate took one spiraling downward young Hispanic and turned him into the parent he is today.