wounded warrior puts his traumatic combat experience on ice

By Rick Gregory, Team Orlando News Guest Writer

Gen. George Patton once said, “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”

Will Castillo, an Orlando resident and 10-year Army veteran, knows firsthand what the bottom looks like and what it takes to achieve that successful bounce.

He was born in Colombia, South America, and raised there during his first five years by his grandparents, until his mother, who had legally immigrated to the United States, could get the official paperwork for him to join her.

While being raised in Queens, N.Y., Castillo was enjoying life, having married and being the proud father of two daughters by the age of 19. He was also working toward attaining a college degree.

Life was good. Then, like many thousands of Americans, his world took a drastic change when the country was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Feeling an enormous sense of pride, gratitude and responsibility to the United States, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to join fellow Americans to right the wrong inflicted on the country.

Castillo went beyond just enlisting. He became a member of the “eyes and ears” of the Army as a Cavalry Scout, where he would twice be deployed to Iraq to take the fight to the enemy.

It was April 27, 2007, just six months into his second deployment, that Castillo, who had risen to the rank of staff sergeant, came face-to-face with the event that would send his psyche to rock bottom…