Texas Army National Guard Soldier and Mrs. Texas Galaxy, SSG San Juanita Escobar, poses for photos with her husband, Luis Escobar, after winning the Mrs. Texas Galaxy Pageant, in March 2018. (Photo courtesy of Mrs. Texas Galaxy Pageant).
AUSTIN, Texas — The southernmost tip of Texas falls into what is colloquially known as “The Valley.” No one really knows why it’s called this; the actual Rio Grande Valley and the nearest mountains are hundreds of miles away.
The land is flat, tropical, and the home of a predominantly Hispanic population.
It was there, in what she calls the “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” town of Premont, that Army Staff Sergeant (SSG) San Juanita Escobar, of the Texas Army National Guard, took the first steps that would both change her life and the lives of hundreds of young women in Texas and around the world.
These first steps consisted of beauty pageants in the nearby and even smaller town of Concepcion, where pageant competitions are often the source of longstanding family rivalries, and defending a title is a matter of honor. Back then, few anticipated that this south Texas girl from the Valley would rise to the title of Mrs. Texas Galaxy.
A Family Tradition
“Pageants were always something that my family did,” SSG Escobar says. “We had the crown for years, so it was something you just did when you reached a certain age. After that, I competed in several smaller, regional pageants and county fairs.”
Those pageants led to small, local modeling jobs and eventually to auditions in California. But as much as SSG Escobar dreamed of getting out of the small town she lived in, she decided this was not the path she wanted to follow. Commitments at home made her decline the audition callbacks.
“At the time, I wasn’t going to pick up and move to California,” she says. “I had sports, school, and my friends that were more important to me. I also didn’t want to do that to the rest of my siblings, so I put all that on the back burner.”
Joining the Guard
SSG Escobar stayed in Premont, filling every spare moment of time with studies, volleyball, basketball, cross-country, tennis, and band, until one day during her senior year, a recruiter from the Texas Army Guard approached her.
And in a matter of days, everything changed.
“When the Army National Guard recruiter came and talked to me, and explained the education benefits, I was sold, and it became a matter of, ‘How fast can we do this?’” SSG Escobar recalls. “So, I met my recruiter on Tuesday, and I was enlisted by Friday.”
The abruptness of her decision came as a shock to family and friends. But while joining the military was a leap into unknown territory for SSG Escobar and her family, the lure of education and travel while serving close to home was irresistible to the 17-year-old.
“I never really knew much about the military,” she says. “When they told me I could serve part-time, serve my country, still make a change in the world, better my community, and still get my education, that’s really what made the Army National Guard stand out from the other services.”
Basic Training
In July 2008, SSG Escobar finally left the small town of her childhood for basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. It was her first time really being away from home and family. Without them, she said, she had to discover and nurture new internal strengths to help her get through some of the tougher moments on her path to becoming a Soldier.
“My strength to continue was knowing that this was something that I truly wanted,” she says. “I knew it was going to change my life for the better, and I knew it would make my family proud.”
Her competitive nature also helped get her through.
“I’m very competitive,” she says. “I always want to win and be the best, so I used that as my driving force.”
After completing basic and then Advanced Individual Training, SSG Escobar returned to Texas, and was assigned to the 368th Engineer Battalion in Corpus Christi. There, she worked in personnel administration, processing paperwork of Soldiers who were deploying. It was also while there that she quickly began to feel like it wasn’t enough.
“I was there for maybe two drills before I started seeing that all my friends were deploying. I really loved the Army National Guard active life, so I volunteered to deploy,” she says.
Soon enough, SSG Escobar headed to the African nation of Djibouti with the Texas Army Guard’s 3rd
Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment as a member of the security forces element for a civil affairs team.
Helping Other Women
While in Africa, the future Mrs. Texas Galaxy saw a problem, and in a move that would come to be a hallmark of her military career, she decided to help solve it.
“While I was assigned to the civil affairs team, I helped create the Women’s Initiative Program in Ethiopia,” SSG Escobar says. “Because of how high the school dropout rate is for young women, we developed special groups to go to different villages and orphanages to educate and empower them to speak to their political figures, and to also inform other women about different political and medical issues.”
In many parts of Africa, women are routinely subjected to discrimination and violence by virtue of tradition or customs, SSG Escobar says. Her team addressed these issues head-on through a combination of education and strength.
“The women always felt alone, like it was them against everyone,” says SSG Escobar. “So, we brought groups together for school, and we would teach them that if males don't want to help them, they can help each other.”
That effort fostered an environment of empowerment, she says, adding that it “let them know that their internal strength could be used to benefit each other.”
At first, the groups were made up of young women between the ages of 18 to 23, but eventually would reach out to thousands of girls and women of all ages.
The Women’s Initiative Program also worked closely with other programs designed to improve education and raise awareness of HIV and AIDS to expand its reach even further. With a push from then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, it led to an outreach in 13 different countries that focused on teaching women to advocate for themselves.
When that mission was over, SSG Escobar returned home and became a recruiter for the Texas Army National Guard so she could continue to change young people’s lives the way her own life was changed.
“My motivation was that I knew where I started, and I know where I’m at now,” she says. “I just want to tell people that there’s going to be light if that’s what they choose, if they choose to turn their challenges into a positive."
Serving as a recruiter, in some ways, also brought her right back to old family traditions.
“When I would talk to students, the females would always say, ‘Oh, I’m too girly to serve in the military,’ or they would worry they weren’t going to be able to ‘be girly.’”
Those comments, in part, led her to return to pageants like the ones of her youth.
Return to Beauty Pageants
“I started doing beauty pageants again,” SSG Escobar says. “I would go into schools and show them a pageant picture, but I would be there in uniform, and I would say, ‘You can’t tell me you can’t do this.’ It was after that I started seeing more of an ‘I can do this’ attitude.”
Going back to the pageant world after serving as a Soldier gave SSG Escobar a unique perspective. She says she drew on those experiences and prepared as rigorously as she would for a military mission, using the training and confidence she gained while serving to make her an even tougher and more determined competitor.
After three years, SSG Escobar left the recruiting world to dedicate more time to school but she was still competing in pageants.
In March, she was crowned Mrs. Texas Galaxy, and is moving on to an international competition this month, where she represents Texas against dozens of competitors from all over the world. Despite this potential for international celebrity, her primary focus remains serving those in need.
As Mrs. Texas Galaxy, SSG Escobar focuses on highlighting suicide prevention for veterans and spreading suicide awareness. And, as a member of the Texas Army National Guard, she focuses on helping others, both around the world and at home in Texas.
“As a member of the National Guard I have been able to go to multiple countries, but I have also been able to serve stateside,” SSG Escobar says. “I saw the impact of what it meant when our Soldiers went in to help during Hurricane Harvey, and how much our citizens appreciated that. To me that’s important because these are our friends and family. Who is going to take care of them better than us, ourselves?”
If you have an interest in joining the Army National Guard to serve your country and community, there are plenty of options available, all while serving part-time. The Guard offers more than 150 careers, including infantry and engineering. You can check out the full roster of possibilities on our job board. Be sure to take a look at the Guard’s outstanding benefits, including money for college.
From an original story by Army SGT Steve Johnson, 100th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, which originally appeared in the news section of NationalGuard.mil in June 2018.
