Veteran Sarom Teiv: War Hero Continues to Serve Her Sisters

While Sarom Teiv fought for her brothers and sisters in arms during combat, she knows there is still more she can do to help.

Paratrooper and Bronze Star recipient Sarom Teiv is a retired sergeant 1st class with 21 years of service in the United States Army. As a drill sergeant, she turned thousands of people into soldiers and leaders; she has served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those tours, she said with pride, “For a transporter delivering supplies and equipment to five companies, those roads in Afghanistan were some of the most dangerous places you could be, but I made it back and I brought all my troops back home.” Others see her as a hero, but Sarom still struggles to see herself that way because, she observed, “I think growing up, I was socialized—we all were—to only think of men in that role.”

Female Leadership
“As the distribution platoon sergeant, I was the only senior female leader in the 3-509th Infantry (Airborne) Battalion, and,” she confided, “it took me months to gain the respect of the male platoon sergeants from the infantry companies; maybe it’s because I am a woman, not an infantryman, or both.” Eventually trust and rapport were built when her peers realized that, as a platoon sergeant, Sarom did the same work they did. She lived, ate and slept in the same combat compounds, conducted the same missions on the convoy logistical patrols and endured the same incoming rockets and mortar rounds during hostile attacks as they did. “Once they experienced that our only difference was gender, they finally respected my capabilities as a peer leader, and I became their sister-in-arms,” she said.

Raised in Stockton by her Cambodian American family, Sarom attended high school in Marysville, where she remembers being 18 years old and feeling a disconcerting lack of direction. “At that time motherhood or jail seemed like the only options for a young Cambodian girl,” she said without a hint of sarcasm. “One day I tagged along with my boyfriend to the Army recruiter’s office. I was adventurous and fearless by nature so when I saw the recruitment films, I lit up with the realization that I could join the Army and, as they said, ‘be all that you can be.’ I wanted the life I saw on that TV screen, a life of excitement with honor and meaning. It shaped who I am today.”

Wins and Losses
That Army life, full of excitement, honor and meaning, also came with innumerable close calls during deployments, parachute jumps, rigorous physical training and significant emotional events, all of which took their toll. You wouldn’t know at first glance that Sarom carries more than her share of battle scars, both physical and in the form of PTSD. The most agonizing was the loss in action of her battle buddy, Thomas Kent Fogarty. “He was like a brother to me,” she said. “Every time I even see the word Afghanistan it reminds me of him, of 2012; it takes me back to that time.” Sarom visited his grave in Arlington National Cemetery this past May and keeps in touch with his mother, sending flowers on Gold Star Mothers Family Day. It’s a terribly painful loss, but she says, “I want his name and memory to go on, to be heard and not forgotten.”

It was only after Sarom retired from the Army in August 2018 and spent the next five years caring for her parents that she realized she had lost her identity due to the isolation of transitioning out of the Army. She began looking for a support system of other veterans such as herself. In February, that search led her to attend her first town hall meeting at Stockton’s American Legion Karl Ross Post 16, where she made some important discoveries.

Her New Direction
Via the American Legion Auxiliary, the Karl Ross Post is integral to supporting veterans in the community. They even have a support group for the caregivers and families of veterans. But to Sarom’s shock, no group existed for the specific purpose of connecting and supporting women veterans. At the gathering she stood up and announced, “I am asking for women veteran’s resources here; I need it and I haven’t found it.” She did not realize in that moment she had just spoken into existence a new purpose and path she would take toward healing herself and others. Her days of leadership were not finished.

After the meeting, Sarom was approached by Mary Alt, LSW, past president of the auxiliary. Joining her was Tino Adame, Jr., a Marine veteran and Purple Heart recipient, and Pedro Delgado, an Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) Marine veteran. “They all made me feel so welcome that day and ever since,” Sarom said of the warm reception from the organization, whose members quickly jumped into action. In June, they held a Women Veteran’s Recognition Day and by the end of August a support group of 26 women veterans had formed. The new group, which Sarom named The Warrioress League 209, recently held a women veteran’s barbecue and hike at Pinecrest that she described as creating immediate connection and camaraderie among the attendees. “You get chills hearing their stories and everyone asked, ‘Why have we not done this before?’”

As an alumni of the Women Veterans Leadership Program, a national group that selects and trains approximately 80 new members per year from thousands of applicants, Sarom integrates her training to collaborate with a parent nonprofit organization, The Mission Continues, which supports veterans to lead projects that benefit underserved groups in the community. “It helps us find our purpose as leaders by serving and transforming our communities,” she explained.

Mary Alt, whose expertise is in traumatic brain injuries and is the caregiver for her husband, a Vietnam veteran, understands the struggle. With a great deal of personal empathy, Mary pointed out, “Caregivers of veterans can be as unseen as the women vets,” describing not just herself but the people she has assisted. A licensed social worker, Mary said of Sarom’s impressive trajectory, “She is so passionate about her cause and has already achieved so much.”

Indeed, just one semester away from earning her master’s degree in psychology, Sarom plans to get her PhD while carrying out her newfound purpose. “My mission is to advocate for and encourage women veterans to no longer be invisible and to reclaim their identity. Women veterans need to be encouraged in their healing and empowered as leaders in the community like they were in the military,” she affirmed. Sarom is also in the Leadership Stockton 2025 class, where she is proposing ways to address the needs of Stockton’s unhoused population.

Sarom has found without fail that “there is something special about women who wore the uniform and combat boots and take pride in serving our country. They can relate because they were in the trenches too. We offer a unique healing to one another and it’s really powerful being in a room full of women veterans.” With gratitude, she concluded, “I am fortunate, at 45, to have the drive, the passion and the ability to do this, and being retired, I have the capacity to be there for our sisters. It’s so rewarding when I see what the others get out of it; to me, that is priceless.”