MILITARY MATTERS: Army Officer Stays Busy With Her Space Unit, Winning Pageants, And Honoring Gold Star Families

COLORADO SPRINGS, Co. (WTVM) - A woman from East Alabama went from college softball player to Army officer to beauty queen. Her latest job is with the 1st Space Brigade. This soldier shared about her job and journey with us.

Don’t get this former Mrs. Colorado confused with a pageant girl – and she also doesn’t work for the space force, but close.

“We enable the warfighter to communicate, move, and shoot more effectively. That is protecting our assets in space and defending them,” Captain Angie DiMattia-Veith said.

Captain Angie DiMattia-Veith is an active duty Army officer with the 1st space brigade, the only space unit in the Army, a separate branch than the space force. She explains what they do.

“Space command has an area of responsibility that is not on the planet, but 100 kilometers above sea level and out,” DiMattia-Veith told us. “In an infantry combat team, there’s over 2500 assets that are space reliant, like GPS guided munitions and our satellite communications.”

On the ground and decades ago, she grew up poor in Phenix City. DiMattia-Veith got a scholarship to play college softball, then competed in bodybuilding and taught group fitness in Columbus. She eventually became a soldier at age 26 and says she’s learned so many life lessons from 11 years so far in the Army.

“It (joining the military) will make you mature in ways that nothing else can. I didn’t realize how much I needed the military,” DiMattia-Veith said. “You are going to have your fitness in, which is the most important part of us being a lethal force.”

And it’s a force that is giving more and more opportunities to women, like in combat and Ranger school, even those this female soldier says “women are worried about losing their femininity.”

DiMattia-Veith, a self-described tomboy, became the first active-duty soldier to ever win “Ms.” Colorado for single women over 29 years old. She has a message for female soldiers or future ones.

“If I can turn being a pageant queen into something good for my career, then you can be as feminine as you want to be,” she added.

She’s used the platform of winning Colorado pageants 2 years in a row to raise money and awareness for a non-profit she’s a national spokesperson for, one that helps Gold Star families who have lost dads, moms and others while they were soldiers in war.

“Regardless of how that service member died, those children suffered 100% loss of a parent,” DiMattia-Veith said. “Angels of America’s Fallen insures they support the dreams of those children, funding those extracurricular activities.”

To learn more about this organization and DiMattia-Veith’s Army and fitness journey, go to https://www.wtvm.com/page/podcast/ as she’s a guest on our latest episode of “Run The Race.”

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