I love my job

This past weekend I got to attend my first family update for work. Family updates are where various government officials travel to different regions of the country to speak to people who lost a family member in WWII, Korea, Vietnam or the Cold War. They're put on by the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (aka the DPMO). The government officials who attend the briefings include people who work on archives and research, a few people from AFDIL, the head of JPAC/CIL (the anthropologists and archeologists who go out in the field), and various casualty officers from the different services who are the people who deal with the individual families and cases. During the updates someone from each of the major branches (Archives and Research, AFDIL and JPAC) speaks on what the role their organization plays in the search, recovery and identification process. For each update AFDIL sends our Deputy Director (Mr. Canik) and a few of the scientists to collect reference samples from the family members, and this past weekend it was my turn to go!
Mr. Canik, my friends and coworkers Kristina and Megan, and myself all boarded a plane in DC early Friday morning to set off on our adventure. We arrived in Richland, WA around 12:30 and after we got to our hotel Mr. Canik sent us girls off to find something for us all to do while he had a bite to eat. As my dad can tell you, there just isn't a whole lot to do in Richland (it's in the South-West corner of the state for geographical reference), but we did read something about a dam nearby and decided that was our best bet. Turned out that was a good choice. The McNary Dam is situated on the Columbia River which is the border of Oregon and Washington, and about a half hour south of Richland. The drive down gave us a good look at the high plains and topography. At the dam itself we got to read about Lewis and Clark's adventures down the Columbia River, check out the salmon swimming up the dam's fish ladder and learn all about the fish sorting center they have there. Totally dorky and we all loved it. For our drive back we took a different route and drove up the Columbia River which was just amazing.
Saturday was the update which took up most of our day. We got to see a little bit of the presentations, but mostly sat at our table and swabbed the insides of people's cheeks (though we did get our pictures taken and a news story written about AFDIL). High excitement for the full-time lab rats. After the update was over (and we got stuck between floors in an elevator briefly), we got to hang out with the casualty officers and people from the DPMO who told us all kinds of crazy stories about the families they deal with and the regular crank calls they get from people in mental institutions. All in all it was incredibly fascinating and really wonderful to see the role we play in these people's lives, and has given me a new appreciation for what we do at AFDIL.