Michael Kelley
Air Force Veteran Makes TCOP His Home
Seeing Michael Kelley now, you wouldn’t know that he was once a very unmotivated student. “I didn’t want to go to school after high school,” laughed Kelley who worked in a grocery store in his early twenties. Things changed when his girlfriend convinced him to join the United States Air Force. As part of his service, he attended a technical school to become part of the military’s in-house firefighting team. “I started having a passion for learning,” recalled Kelley. “It woke me up.” During his time in the military, Kelley served as a firefighter in bases across the country and throughout the Middle East. Afterward, Kelley attended community college and worked for the TSA in Arizona and then in New York. While contemplating his next step, Kelley felt a calling for working in the medical field, but wasn’t sure exactly where he fit in.
“I knew I wanted to help people, so I debated between going into nursing school or becoming a paramedic,” said Kelley. The answer came to him when he thought about his grandmother. “She was diabetic, and we were always talking to her pharmacist—we talked to the pharmacist more than any of the other doctors. And that made me realize what I wanted to be.”
