Nimitz LDO dies trying to help crash victim - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Nimitz LDO dies trying to help crash victim

Lt. Cmdr. Regina Mills left the safety of her car early Monday morning and stepped onto a icy Washington road to help a state trooper with a motorcyclist who had been struck by a vehicle.

But a pickup truck slid out of control and into her car, which struck her and the others, killing the naval officer.

For the past two years, Mills, 44, worked as the aircraft handling officer aboard the carrier Nimitz, bringing order to a busy floating airport and meeting the demands of scores of people tending and moving dozens of aircraft. In her final act, she did what she knew best: Coordinating and directing the mission at hand by helping someone in need.

“Tasked with ensuring optimum safety on board an aircraft carrier, an inherently dangerous environment, she died as a result of trying to assist a person faced with potential danger,” Capt. Paul Monger, Nimitz’s commander, said in a statement. The carrier, which is wrapping up a docked planned incremental availability at Bremerton, Wash., held a memorial service onboard the ship on Friday.

Her impact stretched beyond Nimitz’s decks. Aboard the carrier Carl Vinson, deployed in the Arabian Sea, aviation boatswain’s mates held a memorial foreign object damage walk Wednesday in her honor.

As much as she excelled in the job, Mills took an even greater joy mentoring young sailors and junior officers, friends say.

“There are thousands of sailors whom she touched,” said Lt. Cmdr. Rodney Moss, a placement officer with Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn. “She’s been that driving force that made them want to stay Navy.”

“She was all about leadership and taking care of her people,” said retired Chief Warrant Officer 4 Marion Stewart, who lives in San Diego. “Regina was just top-shelf, a solid leader and a helluva shipmate.”

Mills, of Louisville, Ky., was the first woman to serve as the ship’s aircraft handling officer. But Stewart said that shouldn’t define her. “She earned and deserved to be put in that billet,” he said. “It wasn’t given; it was earned.”

Being the handler — there are only 10 in the Navy doing the job at any given time — is tough duty. The flight and hangar decks can be active from 6 a.m. until 2 a.m., so “the handler is impacting everything that is making all aircraft carriers work,” Moss said. With all the coordination that’s required across the ship, air wing and departments, “you are touching probably more people in one day than people probably do in months.”

Mills, whose maiden name was Rogers, enlisted in December 1986. Her first fleet assignment was with Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 41 at North Island Naval Air Station, Calif. She spent three years with the Navy’s Antarctica support force at Port Hueneme before joining the carrier Abraham Lincoln in Whidbey Island, Wash.

In 2000, she was commissioned. While working on the amphibious assault ship Tarawa, she became the first woman to work as an aircraft handling officer, according to NPC.

“They were all just ecstatic to be working with her,” Stewart said. “Regina was just a top-notch [aircraft director].”

Friends described her as a role model, “squared away” and approachable, but “she didn’t play around,” Moss said. Stewart said she was “old school. Doing it the right way ... all the time.”

Colleagues saw her as a rising star, and she was expected to get selected for commander. “She was our future LDO captain,” Moss said, adding, “this is definitely a life taken away too soon.”