Nellis warrior of the week named

Dick Benoit

Thursday, April 29, 2004 | 8:46 a.m.

A Centennial High School graduate was recently featured in the Nellis Air Force Base weekly newspaper, The Bullseye, as a Warrior of the Week.

Airman 1st Class Nikolaus Spencer, a 2002 graduate of Centennial High, was featured for his motivation and ability to get important jobs done, say his superiors.

Spencer, the son of Ted and Susan Spencer of Las Vegas, is assigned to the 820th Red Horse engineering squadron and works as an engineering assistant.

Though assigned to an Air Force base in his hometown, Spencer quickly learned that members of Red Horse units don't sit still very long. The Las Vegas airman deployed 213 days in 2003 to various locations providing heavy construction support.

"I finished inprocessing into the Red Horse squadron and on the same day I outprocessed for a deployment. That showed me we should always be ready," Spencer said.

The Las Vegas airman is apparently up to the task in the high operations tempo Nellis unit.

"Airman Spencer is always motivated on tasks assigned and gets the job done. He is a very sharp dedicated individual," his supervisor noted in the Bullseye feature.

New command

Capt. Sonya Heinrich, daughter of George and Frieda Mallery of Las Vegas and a 1990 graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will assume command of Detachment 3, 325th Finance Battalion, in Whitehall, Ohio, on June 2. Heinrich is leaving the Headquarters, 90th Regional Readiness Command, a major Army Reserve Headquarters in North Little Rock, Ark., to assume the command position. She is a budget officer in the comptroller section, of the 90th, which handles budget and pay.

Heinrich spent more than three years as an enlisted active duty soldier. After transferring to the Army Reserve and earning her officer's commission, she served two years in Palm Beach, Fla., at the 3220th Garrison Support Unit as a supply officer, then spent four years on extended active duty with the 94th Regional Readiness Command in Devens, Mass., as a pay officer.

The UNLV graduate is currently working on her master's in business administration through online courses at Western New England College in Springfield, Mass.

In brief

Alvarez is a 1995 graduate of Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, with a bachelor's degree and a 2002 graduate of Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, with an MD degree.