Adult Eagles-Brooke Rios (2014)

They might not admit it, but a large portion of the students graduating this spring don’t have a clue what they really want to do with their lives. Sure, they’re excited about closing the chapter on high school, but the next step into adulthood can be a bit uncertain. 

Twelve years ago, Brooke (Oachs) Rios certainly fit into that category. The 2014 Maple River graduate is now a recruiter for the United States Navy Reserve and helps young adults discover who they are and what they want, but like many young people, dreaming a dream is much easier than attaining it. “I just wanted to go to college, but I didn’t apply to colleges in time to get registered for the fall,” Rios admits. Instead of taking a year off, Rios made other plans. “I ended up walking into a recruiters office on a whim.” Joining the Navy Reserve, she reckoned, bought her some time in order to go back to college. 

But instead of finding a new route to “a degree, getting a job, then getting married, have kids–that archetype,” Rios discovered a new mindset and an exciting career. “So it's a big world, and as soon as I left, I kind of realized that. Just realizing that I'm not limited to really anything, you can really do whatever it is that you want. Just having an open mind to all the different opportunities, and not limiting myself, I would say, is the biggest thing that I've learned.”

Growing up in small-town Mapleton, Rios described herself as “girly” back in high school, playing volleyball and attending football games. Raised in a home with her twin sister Kayla and older sister Hailey, Brooke still cherishes her upbringing. “Coming from a place where you can hang out with people, where they literally watched you grow up from the time that you were a kid, you can't really replicate that really anywhere else.”  

Her “whim” to join the Navy Reserves, however, expanded her views of the world. “There's so much that I don't know about the world and other places…  so I went to boot camp. I went to my rating school in San Antonio, Texas, and then when I came back, I started school at MSU. I majored in economics, and I did all that, and I ended up studying abroad in Spain. That way I could… get some experiences outside of southern Minnesota. I ended up loving that. I sort of fell in love with traveling.

 Her time in the military, “sort of fueled my bug to travel even more, Rios said, “Then I went to South America, and I did all these different things, and then I went on a mobilization in 2018 and then again in 2020.” 

While traveling the world, Rios also experienced a bit of self-discovery. Since August of 2022, she has been a recruiter stationed in San Diego, California. To do the job, she took a crash course in self-confidence. “You don't realize how much you lack in confidence until you're really putting yourself out there like that. I wanted people to take me seriously. And I realized quickly that if I stayed sort of in my shell and like, ‘hi, like, how's it going?’ people weren't going to take me very seriously.” 

To change that, Rios said she had to, “really get a hold of that and work on it. And honestly, I just faked it for a lot of the time. I truly wasn't comfortable talking to strangers.” But once she started doing it, she said she realized, “that wasn't so bad.” 

From there, Rios had the opportunity to sing the national anthem for a friend's ceremony. “If you ever have any fear of public speaking, you should sing in front of people, because if you can sing in front of people, you can talk in front of people,” Rios learned. She also found herself studying and modeling others who were already established speakers. “It's really amazing what you can do with your skills when you intentionally work on them.”

Having figured out what skills she needed to survive–and thrive–at the job, Rios discovered a job unlike anything she’d ever experienced in sales. “It's not what I would call a ‘clock in, clock out’ type of job. You have to show up and you have to put in the work to get the work. So it is what you make of it, truly. If you come to work and you just go through the motions, you're probably going to struggle and have some challenges, but if you really make the most of it, you can set yourself up, not only just for your current work, but in the future.”

Making the most of it mean Rios learning it was, “in my best interest to network with other people, where veterans are going to be. So that's sort of my goal. When you do things like networking and going to events and shop fairs and everything like that, you realize that there's people who go to those types of things that have the mindset to support other people.” Those are the types of places that she learned have environments where, “everybody is supporting everybody. Everybody wants to see everybody win.” 

Rios positions herself as someone who can help others “win.” She said, “I call people, meet people in person, bring them into my office, talk to them about their opportunities, set them up with any resources that they need. And that's pretty much what I do now.”

Being a military recruiter has been a big learning experience, and one that Rios would recommend to others. “I think that anybody that has an opportunity to do a job like this should do it, because even if you don't fall in love with recruiting or sales, it teaches you a lot of life skills.” Skills such as, “How do you walk up to a group of people and introduce yourself without making it weird? Or, how do you just walk into a place of business and you need something from them? And how do you get something out of them without making it transactional?” 

Rios understands that a life in the military is not for everyone, which is why she spends time getting to understand the goals of her recruits. “So what are your interests? You know, if you're talking to someone from a small town, Minnesota, have you ever left? Are you interested in leaving? What sorts of things do you want to see? What type of people do you want to be around?” Rios has seen the vast opportunities in a big organization like the military, and she helps others see the same thing. 

“I would try to appeal to what it is that you are interested in, so you're not just being thrown into something. I try to just basically provide any information I can via social media to people that are either joining or thinking about joining. And that's sort of my passion now–is I'm trying to just help other people in ways that I wish someone would have showed up for me.” 

Her time in the military also allowed her to meet her husband, who serves in the Marine Corps. While Brooke will remain a recruiter, she’s about to flip coasts as she moves from the Pacific to the Atlantic, where she and her husband will be settling in North Carolina. 

Along with helping others about to enter the military, she’s also developed another new interest: real estate. While she’d eventually like to return to Minnesota to purchase some land for her family “and some chickens,” moving from base to base has allowed her to invest in properties. “Something people do in the military is sort of real estate, you know, moguling. So we bought a house here in California. I would like to keep it and then buy a house where we go next and sort of build my legacy for my family in that way.” 

Recently, she was even able to visit the ship that recovered the Artemis II. “When you’re in this sort of life, you don’t think much of it because it's just your life. When I think back to the 18 year old me, or whatever, thinking about the life that I would be living, it's like, oh, yeah, this is something that's actually really cool, you know? So, yeah, I do really like the fact now that I've met people from all over. I love the fact that I came from where I came from.  Minnesota has a very deep, you know, we're very it's very important to us the connections that we have. And I've even heard from people that have moved to Minnesota from other places. They feel that people that have friendships with other people, they can feel the strong connection that they have with people, and so that's something that I really am glad that I was able to experience in my childhood and young adult life.

Reflecting on her whim to enter the military, Rios is thankful for the opportunity. Along with stability and career development, she believes the military life has taught her problem solving. “So you just get thrown into it, and you just figure it out. So problem solving skills, confidence, because being thrown into situations and being successful, you realize, oh, I can do this, and you don't have this paradigm that I have to be this type of a person to do this type of a job or lead these people. So I would say that's what it's given me most of all. And I would say for him as well, you know, now he's a senior enlisted person. So he runs, you know, his whole platoon of people. I think that if I pursued a career in the civilian world, I wouldn't necessarily be thrown into a leadership position in that way.”

Brooke with her Minnesota family.

And what advice would she give the graduates at Maple River High School?

“I would say: be very intentional with the decisions you make. The people that you meet and the people that you keep around it. A lot of people learn the hard way: you are who you surround yourself with. So if there's somebody that has a life that you want or is living a lifestyle that you want, you really should surround yourself with people like that. And if you look around and realize that the life that you're living isn't necessarily the life that you want for yourself, then you know that something needs to change, and you do have the power to change that for yourself.”

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