Captain Caitlin Raye Cima is CadetStuff's Associate Editor and all-around attitude adjuster. As the only female staffer, she works diligently to stifle the copious amounts of raging testosterone permeating CadetStuff (with only limited success --Ed).
Captain Cima joined CAP in 1997 in Texas Wing's Thunderbird Composite Squadron. She fell in love with the cadet program, and once a uniform could be tailored down to her size ("I'm not short, I'm fun-size!"), she began criss-crossing the globe in madCAP adventures. You name it, she probably attended it, staffed it, or commanded it: twenty-plus encampments, several keystone-clad years at HMRS, thousands of hours as a cadet leadership instructor in Texas and the Southwest Region, a participant in the 2003 IACE to Oz (The best Aussie exchange ever. No, seriously. It was. She promises.), plus two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
Her questionble cadet accolades include a Meritorious Service Award, a few crownings as "Miss Cadet of the Year", and the knowledge that she can out flutter-kick anyone that walks the earth. She prides herself with being one of the founding members of the Texas Cadet Training and Education Program, a founder and instructor at Texas' Ground Search and Rescue Specialty School (servamus vestrum), a member of the prestigious "Old Guard," and the record-holder for the longest stint as a C/LtCol (and the shortest as a C/Col). (The list goes on, but we male staffers are feeling terribly inadequate right now, so let's just say the girl's got it together. -- Ed.)
No offense to any Zoo U alum, but Captain Cima couldn't stand the idea squandering her precious college years, so she took an AFROTC scholarship to Baylor University. After a failed attempt to start a cadet exchange program with the Bedouin nomads of the Egyptian Sinai, she completed a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. One hasty commissioning in the World's Greatest Air Force later (that's what the brochure said, anyway), and she ran screaming for the hills.
Despite her years of training at Hawk, her 2nd Lt direction-finding skills landed her in the desert of Tucson, AZ, where she works for a rescue unit at Davis-Monthan AFB sharpening pencils (a key 2nd Lt skill). When not sharpening pencils, Capt Cima can be found trudging around CENTCOM, rockclimbing, sleeping in hammocks, imposing a hefty food tax on her coworkers, and finishing her MA in Strategic Intelligence.