MARK SMITH / PVT Heather Harris discusses her background in the Civil Air Patrol. Heather stands by the Reflecting Pool below the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Advertisement

She is only 17 and, to say the least, slight in stature, but she's also a first lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol and considering either Air National Guard training when she graduates, or perhaps entering the U.S. Air Force itself.

Heather Harris may be a perfect example of someone not to underestimate.

She admits she "never thought I had a military bone in my body," but then a few years ago she took part in CAP first-responder training at the National Emergency Service Academy in Indiana and began to discover who she really is.

She has a variety of options available, from enlisting as soon as she's done with high school, to possibly entering college or at least undertaking some emergency medical tech training at Great Basin College, to possibly opting for the Air National Guard.

"Surprised me," blurted her mother, Lezlie Harris, when asked about her daughter's choice of possible career avenues.

"I have a lot of science classes under my belt," Heather said. "I kind of mocked people who were joining the military, and especially the Air Force. Then I saw the Civil Air Patrol and was instantly attracted. I liked the uniformity of it. You learn a lot there."

She was only in her mid-teens, but she thrived.

"Leadership. That was the biggest thing I learned there," she said. "I've always been a stubborn, determined person. When you're accountable for other people -- it's one thing to be accountable for your own actions, but it's another to be responsible for others."

In freshmen and junior years, Heather was active in Army Junior ROTC here, but then won acceptance to NorthWest Career and Technical Academy the first year it opened in Las Vegas.

Lezlie was already driving Heather to Vegas every Tuesday to CAP training, but now it made sense to get Heather her own wheels, and that was great until gasoline prices broke through the roof. Then it just made sense for her to return to Pahrump Valley for her final years.

With her senior year unfolding, she said, there are "a lot of options I need to refine."

All her friends are either in college or have become members of the working class, and perhaps a dozen or so have chosen the military as an option. Heather recalls again how unlikely it was for her to opt for a uniform. "Not for a second did I," she said when asked again whether she had ever thought about it.

Not even her stint of basic training at Fallon Naval Air Station threw her -- "That was only a week and a half," she said.

At one point, 30 different people applied for a position on the unit color guard. Five spots were available, "and I got one."

And she loved it, "everything from marching to the classes to the training."

Recently, in addition to her CAP duties, her work at Sonic and preparing for her senior year at high school, she found time to cram into her schedule a trip to Washington, D.C., which she found fascinating.

She liked the Iwo Jima monument and the Lincoln Memorial the most, she said.

"Just seeing the shadowy figure back in the memorial," she remembered. "It was like going back in time. It made history more real than you expect. The kind of learning you can't get in classes."

"Seeing the building I've seen hundreds of times on TV and in pictures was like walking into a time machine. I couldn't contain it, I charged up the memorial stairs like Rocky on steroids," she wrote at the time. "Then I saw the wall (Vietnam memorial). It was intense too."

And very shortly she and her mom will be heading back east -- her older brother Cameron is about to graduate from Army basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., and they'll both be there.

She laughed a little, recalling how much military background it turned out was in her family after all: this uncle, that uncle, a cousin over there, even a great-grandfather who died in World War II.

One might imagine there is, in the end, a lot of good reasons for her to join the military.