WEBVTT

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- Let me know when you
leave surface, reach bottom.

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Hi, my name is Humberto Santiago.

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I am 40 years old and I am
from Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.

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And my job here, on this
mission, is Diver Supervisor.

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You just jump in and you
just feel invigorated.

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- [Narrator] He calls it
his salt water therapy.

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- It's something that I love to do

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and there's that saying,

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if you're afraid of dying,

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you're never gonna
really fully live, right?

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Green diver, move back to
your tank, start up and down.

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- [Narrator] Humberto was 11

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when he got his dive certification

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and he's a competitive spear fisherman.

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The ocean, yeah, it's his happy place.

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- When I'm free diving, and I jump in,

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everything, all my troubles,

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anything could be happening in my life

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and when I'm in the water,
there's nothing but the water.

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- [Narrator] He was fortunate enough

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to turn his passion into a profession.

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- So when I initially
went to join the Army,

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because I already was fluent
in English and Spanish,

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I wanted to be a linguist.

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As I'm in there, I saw the diver thing,

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and I was like, oh no, I
don't wanna be a linguist,

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I wanna be a diver.

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- [Narrator] Santiago
was the only Army student

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out of 10 to graduate dive school.

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He would go on to be an instructor

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at the dive school in Panama City, Florida

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before he joined the
7th Dive team in Hawaii.

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- The soldiers in Hawaii, on the 7th,

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they get the opportunity
to travel the world,

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to see different cultures.

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I always tell them these are experiences

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that they'll be able to talk about later.

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- There we go, there's tracking two.

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- Just stay where you
are, get ready to travel,

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both divers get ready to travel.

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- Staff Sergeant Santiago was one of my

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Phase Two instructors.

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I didn't like him at the
time, in dive school,

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'cause he was always a pain to deal with

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and I never understood it
and then I got to the unit

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and he was a totally different person,

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completely different animal.

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Super helpful, incredibly wise.

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- [Santiago] Diver, go back to
your tank, start up and down.

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- Staff Sergeant Santiago is amazing.

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He actually was one of my
dive school instructors

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and I was thinking he was picking on me

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and being mean to me, but he
was doing it for a reason.

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He was doing it because he wanted to see

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if this guy's gonna be an asset to my team

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or if he's not and if he's not,

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then I don't want him to be a diver.

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- The soldiers that I train
to send off to the units,

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towards the end of the
course, I tell them;

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Hey, let's see you guys again

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and everything that happened in school

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and nothing's ever personal,

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there's a purpose behind everything.

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Divers on the same job.

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We're gonna make this dive.

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(mumbles)

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(splashing)

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Our job is innately dangerous.

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It is underwater, it is not an environment

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that we are adept to survive in.

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There's only so much that
the supervisor can do.

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They have to take care
of themselves down there,

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it doesn't matter what I
tell them on the surface,

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it doesn't matter,

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you're pretty much on your own underwater.

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(mumbles) those signals,

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move back to your tank, start up and down.

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- Understand.

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- So with these dives,

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we're doing planned surface decompression.

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We're omitting required
decompression in the water

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and opting to do it inside the chamber,

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so they would only
eliminate amount of time,

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as you guys observe,
once you start coming up,

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it's pretty fast movement,
everybody's moving pretty quick.

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- [Narrator] The 7th Dive team

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partners with the Defense
POW MIA Accounting Agency.

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This trip, they're searching
for missing crew members

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from a helicopter that crashed

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off of the coast of Nha
Trang, Vietnam in 1971.

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This mission is uniquely special for him.

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- It brought me back
to where my dad served,

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he served in Vietnam and so, I was here...

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I was here, he was here,

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he was pretty close to
where we're at right now.

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To me, it's very important

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because I want to help
fulfill our nation's promise.

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One time I looked down where
the ritzy stations were

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and I saw the people dredging,
these are like young people.

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They weren't even born
when these people died

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and they're here trying to
find them, their brothers.

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You join the military
and that's a brotherhood,

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it doesn't matter what service you go,

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there's a promise and
we're gonna find them.

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- [Narrator] Santiago has found

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the perfect marriage
of passion and purpose,

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it's a career of service
that also fuels his soul.

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- It's something that I love to do.

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The ocean has this energy
that I just get from it,

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it's just peaceful, the
ocean is a peaceful place.

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It's not a place for everyone,
but it's a place for me.