When I was 8 years old, my father started working for an airline at the Newark airport as a cargo specialist. My mother and I would take him dinner every night he was working. I would sit in the back seat and watch airplanes take off and land and think “what a magical thing to be able to fly”. I had never met a female pilot, much less a Latina pilot at that point. Many years later I worked at an airline in Orlando, Fl as a reservations agent and then as a crew scheduler. It was there that a couple of pilots I had befriended took me on a discovery flight. I loved the freedom and sense of wonder I experienced. Finding out the cost of earning the certificates and ratings to become an airline pilot tempered my excitement. It was alluded to that due to my gender it would be very difficult to get to a major airline and the most I could hope for was flying “puddle jumpers” around. I was later hired by another airline as a flight attendant and I began seeing and flying with more female pilots. While many came from the military, there were quite a few that had civilian backgrounds. When I told them I wanted to pursue my dream of becoming an airline pilot, these women encouraged me and helped me create a plan of what it would take to accomplish my dream. I have taken that plan revised it several times due to September 11, the Great Recession, and now COVID-19. I wouldn’t trade a single minute of it.