VNG NCO reflects on its path from border town to successful recruitment > Virginia National Guard > News

Staff Sgt. Diana Hudson spent her early years in a rural Mexican border town. Her family’s home, built of wooden pallets, had a dirt floor and no plumbing. Since then, she has immigrated to the United States, served in the U.S. Marine Corps, raised a family, earned a bachelor’s degree, and, most recently, become a top recruiter in the Virginia Army National Guard.

“I don’t think there’s anything special about me,” Hudson said. “I just keep going, one foot in front of the other. I just go and that’s it.”

Where Hudson grew up, opportunity and choice were both rare. She had only one pair of shoes, which she wore only at school. The rest of the time, she went barefoot.

Her childhood home wasn’t much, but it was her home until shortly after her father committed suicide when she was only 10. After that, her paternal grandparents locked up the house, preventing Hudson, her mother, and her two sisters from entering or even retrieving their belongings. Her mother, determined to provide for her young daughters, worked hard after her losses and obtained a work visa that allowed her to work just across the border in Texas. Eventually, through a lawsuit, she was able to recover a small amount of money for the house and belongings she had lost to her in-laws.

“My mom would commute to Texas every day for work,” Hudson said, explaining that the Texas city she went to for work was only 15 minutes away. “She would clean, cook, iron, and eventually find a family that she worked for for a long time.”

Through her employers, Hudson’s mother met a man who liked her. He wanted to marry her and bring her and her daughters to the United States. She agreed, and a few years later Hudson and her sisters came to live in Del Rio, Texas.

At first, the transition was difficult. Hudson said the other Mexican families living there had adapted to American life and she and her sisters had not, but then Hudson threw herself into sports. From volleyball to track to basketball to weightlifting, Hudson did it all, and when money was tight, she said her coaches sometimes chipped in to pay for her medical exams.

Life in the United States was an adjustment for the entire family. When Hudson was selected for college teams, her older sister dropped out of high school and joined the local drug cartels, which eventually led to her deportation and imprisonment.

To avoid following a similar path, Hudson knew she had to leave her hometown and her new small Texas town. In 2002, she joined the Marine Corps. With her name on countless rosters for her high school sports teams, she was immediately prepared for the physical challenges she knew she would face after her service.

“The Marine Corps was an easy thing for me,” Hudson said. “I was already there physically.”

After her initial training in the Marine Corps, Hudson’s first duty station was Okinawa, Japan. Then, with a steady paycheck, she began sending money home, especially after her stepfather suffered an accident at work that left him bedridden with two broken hips and a battle over workers’ compensation.

“I never really saw my full paycheck,” she said. “I remember keeping between $50 and $100 of my paycheck and it all went to my mom.”

After her first tour of duty, Hudson left the Marine Corps and returned to Texas to attend college. Her husband was still an active-duty Marine, and balancing the demands of both their careers was exhausting. She was ready to earn her degree, but just seven months after leaving the Marine Corps, in 2007, she was called back. This time, she stayed for nearly another decade.

When she left the Marine Corps for the second time, with 13 years of total military service, she worked on her degree again. To earn some extra money, she started going to flea markets and selling her finds online. Finding quality items among the cast-offs was a skill she had learned as a child.

“We never bought anything new, everything was secondhand,” Hudson said. “Even in high school, it was all garage sale clothes.”

Eventually, her success with online sales led to the purchase of a children’s clothing store and she ran her own business for three years until she felt it was time for something new.

Around this time, her niece mentioned that she was considering joining the military herself, so Hudson took her to the local National Guard recruiting office in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The recruiter they met there, Sgt. 1st Class Gertha Cleveland, helped Hudson’s niece and then asked Hudson if she would be interested in joining herself. Cleveland told her that she would be a great recruiter and that there was still plenty of time for another round of military service.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not, I’ve already done my time,’” Hudson said, explaining that she was grateful for the help Cleveland provided her niece but wasn’t convinced that more time in the military was the right option for her. Still, she stayed in touch with Cleveland, who proved to be extremely persuasive. In 2022, Hudson enlisted in the Virginia Army National Guard as a 42A Human Resources Specialist, under the direction of Cleveland and Sgt. 1st Class LaTesse Hall. Because it had been five years since her time in the Marines, she had to re-enter Basic Combat Training, which, 20 years after her initial enlistment, proved to be no problem. She earned one of the highest Army Combat Fitness Test scores in her company.

It wasn’t long before Hudson joined the Virginia Beach recruiting force after completing her initial training. She now works in the same office where she was recruited a few years ago. Her background, and in particular her Spanish language skills, have proven to be useful not only to her own recruiting efforts, but to her colleagues as well.

“I feel like this job was made for me,” Hudson said. “Growing up, I always had to explain everything to my mom because I was bilingual. It’s like it’s come full circle and now I can help other recruiters out of state, who sometimes have families that don’t speak English, and set up appointments over the phone.”

When she first came on board for her job as a recruiter, one of the board members asked her what “after sales service” entailed, something she hasn’t stopped talking about since.

“I don’t recruit numbers, I recruit people,” Hudson said. “The kids that I’ve deployed, I talk to them while they’re in basic training. I give them a ride to practice. Their parents call me while they’re in basic training and ask me what they can send. I’m there for them, I’m involved.”

Hudson grew up the way she did and knows firsthand the opportunities military service can bring, and sharing those opportunities is one of her favorite things.

“I love helping people and having the opportunity to give people the chance to go to school, that’s basically it,” she said.

As she looks toward her future, Hudson is already trying to figure out what comes next. Sometimes she’s surprised by all that life has thrown at her, especially when she thinks back to where she came from. But she’s not done yet. She plans to start a master’s degree and plans to start her next business venture before she leaves the military for what will be the third and final time, this time as a retiree.

“Everything I do, I want to be really good at,” she said. “I want to be able to hold my own weight.”

This year, as a rookie recruiter, Hudson’s mission was to recruit eight new soldiers into the Virginia Army National Guard. Not content with that, she set a personal goal of recruiting 12. As the recruiting year comes to a close, she’ll finish the year with 13 recruits.

“It’s not just engaging these people, it’s mentoring,” she said. “It’s talking to them and helping them grow and become a better person.”