Tampa to Iraq to D.C.

A local police officer and Iraq veteran is Laura Bush's guest at the State of the Union address.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO, Times Staff Writer
Published January 29, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [AP photo] Laura Bush (front, center) and others applaud during the State of the Union address. Senior Airman Diane Lopes (second row, second from left), a Tampa police officer, was Bush's guest.

TAMPA - Senior Airman Diane Lopes kept her promise.

Before she was deployed to Iraq, the 37-year-old Tampa police officer looked her mother in the eye.

"Ma, I will be back," the Air Force reservist insisted. "Don't worry about me."

Lopes returned a month later despite serious injuries. And her story caught the attention of first lady Laura Bush.

On Sept. 21, a rocket attack at Kirkuk Air Base pierced Lopes' body with shrapnel, perforated her eardrum, collapsed a lung, burned her legs and snapped the bones in her left leg.

But she showed such determination to live that Bush invited Lopes to be her guest during Monday's State of the Union address.

"I don't know where she pulled all that strength from," said Betty Lopes, 67, just before settling in at her Danbury, Conn., home to watch her second-born child receive presidential recognition.

Lopes, quoted in a Nov. 4 article by a military public affairs writer, recalled the moments after the attack. "Hell no, I'm not dying here today. No way," she remembered thinking.'

When help arrived, she dragged herself onto a stretcher before medics could move her. She forced herself to calm down to slow her heart rate. She yelled out her blood type once she reached the medical center.

She is undergoing treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A reservist with the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Lopes was deployed to Iraq only five months after joining the Tampa Police Department, police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said. Before that, she was a corrections officer at Hillsborough County's Falkenburg Road Jail.

"Our thoughts are definitely with her for a speedy recovery," Davis said.

Lopes entered the Army in 1991 and became a member of the Air Force Reserves in 2003.

She has been awarded a Purple Heart.

Rebecca Catalanello can be reached at rcatalanello@sptimes.com or 813-226-3383.

[Last modified January 29, 2008, 00:50:00]