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Valor award goes to fallen intel warrior

First Lt. Roslyn Schulte put her country before herself. That’s just the way she was, say those who knew her best.

As a cadet at the Air Force Academy, she set aside her girlhood dream of becoming a pilot and chose intelligence work because she believed it would be the better way for her to serve.

And when the call went out for volunteers to Afghanistan, Schulte raised her hand.

She believed she could make a bigger difference overseas — and she did in the three months she spent there, before a roadside bomb ended her life last spring.

For the example she set both as a foreign disclosure officer and as a friend to the Afghan people, Schulte has been posthumously awarded the National Intelligence Medal for Valor.

The decoration, never before given to a woman, is the second-highest award for valor given by the intelligence community. The highest award, the Intelligence Cross, has never been awarded to a woman.

“She had a big smile and a get-it-done attitude,” said Schulte’s father, Bob Schulte, who accepted the medal along with his wife, Susie, and son Todd at a Jan. 22 ceremony near Washington.

“She liked what she was doing. … The people seemed to like her and she liked them. She was a wonderful girl and she loved the Air Force,” he said.

As a foreign disclosure officer, Schulte shared intelligence with Afghan army officers and taught them how to use it.

In her off hours, she mentored Afghan women and distributed clothes and medicine at refugee camps.

Schulte, 25 when she died, went to Afghanistan knowing she would doing “something completely different, unknown” from her job as an imagery analyst with the 613th Air and Space Operations Center at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, said Anthony Pascuma, chief of foreign disclosure for U.S. Central Command, who nominated Schulte for the medal.

“It’s a thankless job, and Roslyn just stepped up and did it 150 percent.”