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TAMPA - Stephanie Matos was just 13 when her father, an Army jumper assigned to U.S. Special Operations at MacDill Air Force Base, died in a parachuting accident in Zephyrhills.
The 1991 death of Army Sgt. Maj. Santos Matos rocked the entire family, but it was especially difficult for Stephanie - the youngest of the Green Beret's three children by nine years.
"It left me sort of wandering aimlessly," she said. "I didn't plan on going to college or anything."
Then came the promise of a free education.
As they have with hundreds of children over the past 23 years, the Tampa-based Special Operations Warrior Foundation is putting Matos through college.
Now 24 and living in north Tampa with her mother Carmen, Matos just earned her associate's degree from Hillsborough Community College, where she made the dean's list. This fall, she'll enter the University of South Florida. Matos' books, her tuition - the Warrior Foundation covers everything.
It is part of the nonprofit's commitment to provide higher education for all the children of Special Operations personnel killed in training or in battle since 1980, when the foundation was formed.
The promise is a steep one: Today, 425 children are under the foundation's wing, including 46 who attended various stages of college last year. In the upcoming academic year, between 80 and 100 students will attend college with the foundation's help.
Foundation leaders warn that their mission will become even more challenging in the months and years to come, because of Special Operations forces' increasing role in the fight against terrorism.
"Normally, we expect to get 15 new kids a year," said retired Air Force Col. John T. Carney, president of the Warrior Foundation and a founder of the group.
"But all it takes is these special missions involving our forces, and those numbers go right out the window," Carney said. "One cargo plane crash could bring us many children. That's what concerns us."
The foundation is bracing for the uncertain future with a money-raising push meant to fatten the group's $4-million endowment to $25-million by 2010 - enough to put 100 children through college each year.
To meet that ambitious goal, the foundation has planned dinners, golf tournaments and relay runs from Plant City to Las Vegas.
The New York Yankees will dedicate some of the proceeds from their June 28 home game to the Warrior Foundation, which last year received $1-million from the Yankees and team owner George Steinbrenner, a Tampa resident.
An upcoming book on the history of Special Ops, with Carney as managing editor, is expected to raise another $500,000.
Also, former Army Ranger Keni Thomas, who survived the Somalia gun battle portrayed in the 2001 film Black Hawk Down, is donating proceeds from a song he wrote about a fellow Ranger who died.
The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, and the military's subsequent response, have helped the foundation's money-raising efforts, Carney said.
Still, the dangerous, covert nature of Special Ops work means the public typically doesn't learn of their accomplishments until after the fact.
There are no "embedded" reporters chronicling Special Ops units' movements and adventures for the evening news.
But the approximately 46,000 men and women in U.S. Special Operations, including the reserves and National Guard, have proven essential in recent months.
"They're fighting drug wars in Colombia, they're in the Philippines," he said. "By the time Americans hear about something going on, Special Ops has been there."
Casualties from their ranks represent 28 percent of all U.S. military deaths, Carney said. Fifty-nine Special Ops members have died since Sept. 11, including five killed in the war on Iraq. The dead left behind 63 children.
Among the Warrior Foundation's 425 recipients are babies, grade-schoolers, teens - even a few middle-age adults who never thought they could afford college until the foundation found them.
Sending a Special Ops child to a university costs the Warrior Foundation as much as $19,000 a year, depending which college he or she chooses.
The foundation counts on donations and money from the Combined Federal Campaign, an annual money-raising drive by military and other federal employees. In 2002, about 20 percent of the foundation's $2-million in revenues came from the Combined Federal Campaign.
Last year, the foundation provided $220,700 in scholarship grants to Special Ops children. The group also secured another $509,000 from outside sources such as state scholarships and federal grants.
But the foundation's outreach work starts as soon as a child's parent dies.
Sometimes, that means tracking a child from toddler age through their teen years, and nurturing him along the way so he's ready for college. Other children, like Matos, have to be tracked down. She was waiting tables in Tampa when the foundation found her.
Dr. Jim Lewis, a resident at Lousiana State University's department of surgery, says he never would have earned his white lab coat without the Warrior Foundation.
"After my dad died, I always had this confidence that, financially at least, we were going to be taken care of," said Dr. Lewis, who graduated from the University of Florida Medical School. "I don't know that I would have come this far without that security."
He was 9 years old when his father, Air Force pilot Harold Lewis Jr., died in the aborted 1980 Special Ops mission that prompted the foundation's creation.
Eight U.S. servicemen died and one was seriously injured when a C-130 transport plane and a helicopter collided in the desert southeast of Tehran, Iran. They had been sent to rescue 53 American hostages, but President Carter canceled the mission following a series of problems leading up to the rescue attempt.
The men who survived the mission, including Carney, vowed to raise money so that their fallen comrades' 17 children could go to college worry-free. Ross Perot was among the first to donate money.
As military actions in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Kuwait and Iraq brought more casualties, the program expanded. It grew from a $700,000 endowment run from a Virginia home, to today's operation, which moved to Tampa in 1999 because of its proximity to U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci sit on the board of advisers.
Carney - a 28-year Air Force veteran who led and planned Special Ops missions in Panama, Granada and Iran - has been president since the foundation moved to Tampa.
Having become like a father to some of the foundation's children, including Dr. Lewis, Carney considers his money-raising efforts as important a mission as anything he encountered overseas.
"This is a very personal job for me," he said. "When we tell a widow that she doesn't have to ever think about taking out college loans for her children, because we'll take care of it, that's one less thing for her to worry about."
- Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 661-2443 or svansickler@sptimes.com
About the foundationWHAT: The Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a national nonprofit group established 23 years ago to provide a free post-secondary education to the children of U.S. Special Operations personnel killed in battle or training since 1980.
WHERE: Based in Tampa, at 2907 W Bay to Bay Blvd., since 1999.
HOW: The foundation provides family and financial counseling. The grants cover books, tuition and housing, and can be used at private universities, state or community colleges, and vocational-technical and career institutions.
WHO: The children of fallen Special Ops personnel from all military branches are eligible, in most cases through age 35. The foundation makes some exceptions, depending on the situation. Recipients must maintain a 2.0 GPA.
- For more information, contact the foundation at 805-9400 cq or visit the Web site, www.specialops.org