In our digital editions
Click here to watch a trailer
about Robert Vera’s new
book, A Warrior’s Faith.
(See page 13 for details.)
arts & entertainment
The Costco
Connection
You’ll find copies of
A Warrior’s Faith
(Item #990252;
available now)
at select Costco
warehouses, and
Robert Vera will
be conducting
signings (go to
Costco.com and click “Author
signings” at the bottom of the
home page). Additionally, a
selection of military-themed
books and new and classic DVD
and Blu-ray titles will be available at Costco warehouses, in
honor of Memorial Day.
By Will Fifield
AUTHOR AND FORMER Navy SEAL Chris Kyle
dedicated American Sniper, his best-selling autobiography, to his wife, his children and two fellow
Navy SEALs. One of those SEALs was Ryan Job, who
was shot in the face by an enemy sniper while on a
rooftop with Kyle in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. Job, then
25, survived the injury, but he lost his sight, which
forced him to retire from service. Costco member
Robert Vera’s A Warrior’s Faith chronicles Job’s courageous and inspiring life after his military career, up
to his untimely death following a surgery in 2009. At
the heart of this story is a transformation through
Christian spirituality, for both Job and Vera.
Job, nicknamed “Biggles” by his fellow
SEALs because of his husky body type,
refused to let his injuries limit him.
After he lost his sight, Job’s relentless
sense of humor, tenacious determination and newfound faith enabled
him to live life to the fullest. For
Job, that included feats such as
summiting Mount Rainier, earning
a bachelor’s degree in business
administration and marrying the
girl of his dreams. Along the way he
inspired countless others, from
wounded warriors to everyday citizens.
Vera met Job in the summer of 2008.
“Ryan and I crossed paths just long enough to
change the course of both of our lives forever,” Vera
writes. Job asked Vera, who had recently transitioned from a 20-year career in finance into the
health and fitness industry, to train with him for an
ascent of Mount Rainier. Job had been offered the
opportunity to climb Rainier—a peak not far from
where he was born and raised, in Issaquah,
Washington—by Camp Patriot ( camppatriot.org), a
nonprofit that helps war vets through therapy programs that involve outdoor adventures. As the two
trained, a deep friendship formed.
“Ryan was humble and funny,” Vera tells The
Connection. “Once, when asked by a boy on a train,
‘Mister, what happened to your eye?’ Ryan replied,
‘Never run with scissors.’ He could have said that he
was a Navy SEAL and he was wounded, but this
would seem like bragging to Ryan, so he played it
down. He could always make me laugh.”
Vera says that he had been questioning whether
he was on the right track around the time he met Job.
He was nervous about his fledgling venture in health
and fitness because he had a wife and two small chil-
dren to support and the economy was in a “free fall.”
In A Warrior’s Faith, Vera describes what he felt was
an unmistakable sign from God, as he and Job
descended a hill they had rocketed up early one
morning. They started down the hill at dawn, and the
hikers they had passed earlier in the dark could now
see Job’s scarred face and closed eyes. They
knew he was blind, and they were aston-
ished and began clapping and cheering.
“I am skeptical by nature and
require neon-like confirmation of
everything,” Vera writes. “God must
know this about me, so he [sent] me a
blind guy named Job into my life. He
then placed this guy in front of me on
a mountain at dawn and had him lead
me while dozens of strangers cheered.”
In this moment, for Vera, many things
fell into place and he was confident in his
heart that he was, indeed, on the right track.
Job was also in the middle of a personal
transformation, Vera says. “He had such a relentless
faith,” Vera says. “It was inspiring.” The struggles of
adapting to life without sight and life’s other challenges held little sway over Job. But their journey
together was cut short.
On September 22, 2009, Job, then 28, was in
Arizona for a follow-up surgery to restore blood
flow to an area below his right eye. This was one of
about 20 surgeries Job had endured since he was
injured in Iraq. But sometime in the early hours of
September 24, Job died in the hospital due to a hospital medical error.
His life was ended, but his influence remains,
says Vera, in a very personal way. “[Job’s] faith overflowed into my life,” Vera writes. “His life was an
example. I miss him a lot.” C
PHOTOS COURTESY OF:CAMP PATRIOT (ABOVE),
J. KIM (BELOW)
Lieutenant Jason Redman, Navy
SEAL (left) and Robert Vera,
author of A Warrior’s Faith atop
Mount Rainier in July 2010, with
Camp Patriot in honor of Ryan
Job. Below, an exhausted Ryan
Job after Navy SEAL training in
Coronado, California, in 2002.
A Warrior’s Faith recounts
a journey of darkness
and light
Mountain
of faith
