L ast spring, Joseph Borger pulled his dress uniform from the closet. After 15 years packed away, it still fit his tall, slender frame. It would be the last time he wore it with his old rating patch, though. The crossed anchors were coming off, making way for a new rating that reflected the life experience he’d accrued in the last decade and a half—in law enforcement. Borger enlisted in May 2000 during his freshman year of college. While finishing his degree, he drilled at Station Atlantic City, becoming a coxswain and settling on a rating. “I wanted to be a boatswain’s mate, because boatswain’s mates were doing everything,” he said with a laugh. While there, he also became a boarding team member, and he learned about tactical law enforcement teams. In the fall of 2001, he was starting his junior year of college when the World Trade Center was attacked. Borger finished his last few months of his degree, and he transitioned to active duty, excited to make the Coast Guard his career. “I wanted to go where the action is,” he said. He left Station Atlantic City and joined TACLET North, the unit that would become the Maritime Security Response Team East. One of his fellow plank owners at the new MSRT was an engineer named Dan Morales. He and Morales, both petty officers at the time, worked closely on cementing the procedures and writing the manuals of the MSRT. “He and I, we go way back. We helped build that program from the ground up,” said Borger. “We were on the same [team] together. And a lot of us who were plank owners, we all stayed in touch. It was a pretty tight community.” The work was highly challenging and mentally and physically demanding. Borger had spent a lot of time traveling on deployments with his law enforcement detachment, but with the transition to MSRT, he was right where he wanted to be. All that changed when he met his future wife, Patti. He loved the world of law enforcement, but he realized he needed a more stable career, and he left active duty as a first class petty officer in 2007 to join the U.S. Secret Service. As an agent, he started in the New York field office doing investigations and protective work but was later selected for the counter assault team—the tactical element that protects the president. Borger joked that people normally picture the Secret Service agents who are out front, protecting dignitaries, wearing suits and black glasses. “My team, you don’t see,” he said, “but we’re there, just in case.” After several years, he began to consider joining the military again. Around 2017, he reached out to his friend Morales, who, by now, had become both a master chief petty officer and a maritime enforcement specialist, a rating that hadn’t existed when either of them had joined. Topping it off, Morales was the rating force master chief for the MEs, and he was making some big changes in the rating, especially for its reservists, which make up 45% of all ME billets. “I told him, ‘Man, I’ve got the perfect place for you,’” said the RFMC. Master Chief Petty Officer Dan Morales, Maritime Enforcement Specialist Rating Force Master Chief, administers the oath of enlistment to Petty Officer 1st Class Joseph Borger during his reenlistment ceremony on the decks of the historic Coast Guard Cutter Taney, April 6. 20 RESERVIST . . Issue 2 • 2021
