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- The People Behind The Sacrifice
Army Pfc. Barbara Vieyra
Died September 18, 2010 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom
22, of Mesa, Ariz.; assigned to 720th Military Police Battalion, 89th Military Police Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas; died Sept. 18 in the Khas district of Kunar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked her unit using an improvised explosive device and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
Ariz. soldier killed in Afghanistan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense says a soldier from Mesa has been killed in Afghanistan.
Army Pfc. Barbara Vieyra died Sept. 18 of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked her unit using an improvised explosive device and rocket propelled grenade fire in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.
The 22-year-old Vieyra was in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
She was assigned to the 720th Military Police Battalion, 89th Military Police Brigade, at Fort Hood, Texas.
Soldier wanted to make a better life for her daughter
The Associated Press
Barbara Vieyra joined the Army because she wanted a job that would make her daughter proud, her sister said.
She had grown up in Mesa, Ariz., where her father worked at the C-Bar dairy farm. In 2008, two years after graduating high school, Vieyra enlisted in the Army and her parents cared for her young daughter, Evelyn.
"She always said, 'I'll be able to come back and it won't be like I've missed her whole life. I'll just have missed a part of her life but I'll be able to give her a better life,'" her sister, Guadalupe, told the Arizona Republic.
Barbara Vieyra, 22, died Sept. 18. She was mortally wounded in an attack in Kunar province, Afghanistan. She was assigned to Fort Hood.
"They're just a very close family," Barbara Feenstra, of C-Bar dairy, said of Vieyra, her parents and two siblings. "And now she's not here anymore."
Barbara Vieyra was born in 1988 to Raul and Elizabeth Vieyra, who emigrated from Mexico several years earlier. She has been described as someone who always looked for the best in people.
On her Facebook profile, she listed competitive swimming and dancing as two of her interests.