From Parties to a Purple Heart

"I still go out every once in a while," she said. "But I also have my priorities: Like, I go to school, I do my homework, I help around the house. I clean the house, I cook, I take my sister to school. I call my mom and say, 'Hey, Mom, how you doing?' Or sometimes she's upstairs reading, and we just start talking. Before, we never used to talk like that. But now, it's like, you know, that's my mother. I love my family."

At a ceremony in Martinsville, Va., two months later, Beltran stood near her fellow soldiers wearing her combat uniform for the first time since Iraq. She was awarded the Bronze Star With Valor. She had already been given a Purple Heart.

Her Bronze Star citation says that, in the face of a complex attack with "a massive amount of small arms fire," Beltran returned "maximum suppressive fire." Even after she was wounded, it said, she laid down "enough suppressive fire to ensure that the rear element of the convoy could move through the kill zone safely. . . . Her personal courage was beyond reproach and contributed to saving the lives of 54 soldiers."

Five other soldiers were awarded Bronze Stars that day. A Silver Star later went to the family of the fallen soldier -- who was credited with taking the full blast of the grenade, thus saving the lives of the three other soldiers in his vehicle.

Even now, the power of that day has not faded.

She reflects: "One day you lose your friend . . . and you're shooting and you see your whole life go by in seconds and you're thinking of all the things you should have done before you left and how the family comes first and then what happens if, you know, you die or something and you never got the chance to say goodbye to your mom."

She is sitting in an apartment in Lorton -- her apartment -- which she has leased with her earnings from her job at Lockheed Martin. Being a service order dispatcher is not her long-term goal, she said, but it is a start.

One weekend a month, she returns to duty with the National Guard. She was promoted to sergeant in October.

Before she left for Iraq, Beltran often asked her mother for help in paying her car insurance and cellphone bill. She spent her weekends at clubs in the District, came home after dawn, and liked to buy the latest clothes and shoes

Her mother recalls telling her, "Monica, you have $10 in your pocket, and you spend $20."

To her mother's objections about her party life, Beltran would say: "Mommy, I'm young. I'm not old like you," her mother remembers.

Now Beltran thinks a lot about the future -- which is one reason why she moved from Woodbridge, where everyone knew her as the teenager she once was. "All my friends told me, 'You changed a lot,' " she said. "At first, they were kind of mad because I wouldn't go out anymore. I wasn't the same."

Lately, Beltran talks about paying off her credit cards and taking classes at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has a semester under her belt and is studying computer science. She thinks about buying a house near Stafford someday. She thinks of investing in property.

She mentions her new pickup truck, with its Purple Heart license plates. She says she chose a tag number with meaning to her.

It reads: OCT 26.