Tonight, Montgomery Community College student Mike Salter will graduate with his Associate in Applied Science degree in gunsmithing. In a few weeks when his sabbatical ends, he will be going to Miami to rejoin the ranks of an elite group of servicemen in the U.S. Coast Guard. Salter is a Coast Guard rescue swimmer and is one of only about 300 service-wide.

Those who have seen the movie The Guardian might have an understanding of the rigors of Coast Guard rescue swimmer training. According to Salter, it was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

Salter was born and raised in Amory, MS near Tupelo and worked for his dad who ran a garment factory. He attended nearby Itawamba Community College, first majoring in nursing and then criminal justice. But he admits to not knowing what he wanted to do until the day he saw a show about U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers on Discovery Channel. “One month later, I was in boot camp,” Salter says.

Salter started competitive swimming year-round when he was just eight years old. He says he loved the water and would quit whatever job he had each summer so he could work as a lifeguard.

Ironically, in boot camp Salter did very little swimming. In fact, he says he had to wait a year and a half before he was able to enroll in the rescue swimmer school. During that time he served on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Dallas out of Charleston, SC where he started out an unranked deck hand. Later he became an Aviation Survival Technician (AST) and trained at the Coast Guard Air Station in Savannah, GA, learning to perform ground handling and servicing of aircraft and survival equipment.

Once he passed the airman program he received his recommendation to proceed to the Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, NC to begin the intense rescue swimmer training.  “The things they do to you . . . it’s a four-month-long nightmare,” Salter says. He describes his worst day of training.

“They got us up at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. and we went to the Grinder, a 15’ by 15’ artificial track.  They ran us through exercises designed to stress our joints. By 6:00 a.m. we were done there. Then we went to the pool to push ourselves again for an hour. We had to swim 500 yards in 12 – 13 minutes. In peak condition I could do this in 6 – 7 minutes, but we were all physically exhausted by this time. After that, we got dried off and they put us in the back of a boat two miles offshore. We threw on wet suits [non-insulated]. This was in December and the water was about 48 degrees. We swam two miles to a beach. Once there, we were on our own for a day and a half, building shelters and finding food until noon the next day.”

According to American Forces Press Service, the rescue swimmer training school has one of the highest student attrition rates of any special operations school in the military. “Roughly 75 students go through the school each year, and fewer than half make it out,” says Sgt. First Class Doug Sample, U.S. Coast Guard correspondent.

ASTs must also have skills to provide basic emergency medical life support to rescued individuals. Salter attended a concentrated four-week EMT-Basic course in Petaluma, CA.

At the end of training, Salter went through a six-month qualification run at an air station until he received his letter of approval. He was finally stationed in Charleston where he used his AST training in boating and fishing accidents, medical emergencies and rescue operations.

Salter says he chose to take a sabbatical in 2006 to further his education. He completed his Associate in Arts degree online in the Coast Guard, but wanted to have a second career once he retires from the service.

Salter’s interest in hunting led him to search for a gunsmithing program. “My wife and I toured MCC in July 2006. We drove around, met the instructors, saw the equipment and talked to other students,” he said. “I got tons of useful information from the students. They didn’t hold anything back. I didn’t hear a bad thing about the program.”

Salter began the program in the fall of 2006 and was surprised at his own enthusiasm for learning. “I was overwhelmed and eager to come to school. That never happened before, in high school or in college,” he says.

Eventually Salter wants to use his gunsmithing skills to retire on. “Once an AST retires, there are two things he can do. Go ride an ambulance or be an upholsterer.” Salter explains that ASTs learn to make sails, sew parachutes and covers or bags, and basically make anything they need. “I was not interested in either of those for retirement,” he says.
Salter says he had one shot at a sabbatical and he wanted to make it count. MCC is proud to have made those years count for Mike Salter.