The Hesperia National Little League story now has more comments (410 as of this moment) than any other story this week across the Freedom Communications media empire. Click here and click on “this week” under Most Commented.
Blizzard has just announced the in-game (World of Warcraft, that is) goody for attendees at this year’s Blizzcon convention in Anaheim.
In 2005, it was the adorable pet murloc, Murky, who will sing and dance like the Looney Tunes frog when he gets bored.
This year, though, this year is so much better than another murloc baby, because it means those of us with Murky can have both rewards out at the same time: This time around, the prize is an in-game murloc suit. (Trust me, if you played WoW, you’d know how deeply awesome that is.)
For months, Stephanie Delgadillo was on an emotional seesaw, not sure whether her mother, Staff Sgt. Claudia Hernandez-Smith, and stepfather, Staff Sgt. Gary Smith, would be granted leave from their deployments in Iraq in time to attend her graduation from Hesperia High School.
In their absence, Stephanie’s older sister, Audrey, now 21, had tended their younger siblings: Grace, 10; Ashley, 5; and Emily, 3. Stephanie had also lived at home until mid-April, when she moved in with her boyfriend after turning 18.
Now, as a sun-splashed afternoon gave way to dusk at the Hyundai Pavilion in Devore this past Thursday, the ovation at the end of the ceremony signaled the culmination of a nearly two-day, knee-aching plane trip that took the parents from Iraq to Kuwait to Scotland to Dallas and finally home.
“I didn’t want to miss it,” Hernandez-Smith said. “To me, it’s like a wedding. They only do it once. It’s a big step, and we wanted to make sure we were here.”
Nearly a year ago, Hernandez-Smith and her husband were deployed with a Black Hawk helicopter division of the Army’s 131st Aviation Regiment stationed at Balad Air Base, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The Hesperia couple requested to serve together because Smith, who’d previously done a tour in Iraq, was concerned for his wife’s safety during her first deployment.
The deployments prompted a family meeting at which Audrey Delgadillo volunteered to watch over her sisters.
Though Ashley and Emily begged to know when their parents were coming home, Audrey kept their pending arrival secret, even when she picked them up at LA/Ontario International Airport on Tuesday.
“They looked at us like they wanted to make sure it was us before they did anything,” Hernandez-Smith said of the homecoming. “They didn’t run and hug us, it was more like I came to them.”
It was Stephanie, working at Baskin-Robbins, who became teary during a surprise reunion.
“I was in the back and going to take out the trash,” she said. “I looked at the monitor and saw people dressed in military gear come in. It took a second and then I realized it was them and started crying.”
“We still had to pay for our ice cream, though,” Smith joked.
