I t started with a few thousand boxes of gloves, the light, snappy kind you’d find at doctors’ offices. Joe Dellamura had them and didn’t need them. He was looking for someone who needed them and didn’t have them. Last summer, Dellamura, who serves as the chief of supply chain management for the Department of Homeland Security, was working out what to do with excess pandemic supply inventory. As he called around to different agencies making sure the supplies were responsibly rehomed, he finally arrived at Border Patrol. The agency said they’d take a good chunk of the boxes, but recommended Dellamura call the Coast Guard down in Miami to see if their crews needed any. He smiled. While he was pretty high up in the logistics world for DHS, Dellamura had also been serving in the Coast Guard as a Reserve boarding officer. One weekend a month, he was part of the enforcement division at Sector Maryland National-Capital Region, making the trip up from his home in Florida. Now that the pandemic was slowing down, he’d considered volunteering for orders. “I never deployed for anything big because I worked for FEMA,” he said. “Our biggest contingency operations are hurricanes, but I’m usually already working during a hurricane.” When he called up the Coast Guard with his offer, he realized they needed much more than gloves. Law enforcement personnel have been extremely busy conducting work on behalf of Operation Vigilant Sentry, a multi-agency effort designed to protect the safety of life at sea and deter maritime mass migration. The Coast Guard has been the lead agency in the ongoing and historic migrant surge, intercepting people attempting the voyage from all over the Caribbean corridor in very dangerous and often unseaworthy vessels. As a maritime enforcement specialist, the listed jobs Dellamura could fill were mostly for watchstanders, but he noted that they also needed a logistics officer. Well, he was very qualified in that—albeit in the civilian world. Cmdr. Ernie Brown was the deputy incident commander in spring of 2023, and he was thrilled that the offer of supplies had come at a critical time. He was shocked to realize the Coast Guard connection. “My logistics chief was on the phone with him, and he said, ‘You really gotta talk to this guy,’” said Brown. “Turns out he was exactly the person we needed.” Brown offered Dellamura the chance to work in logistics for the Coast Guard, and he jumped at it, reporting to the OVS command in May 2023. Once aboard, Dellamura immediately employed his deep knowledge of the FEMA and DHS stock. He worked to transfer more than $600,000 in excess pandemic supplies from the department’s warehouses, re-deploying the disposable, hygienic items in support of another DHS mission. When Capt. Ann McSpadden showed up the following Petty Officer 1st Class Joseph Dellamura at the Regional Response Coordination Center in Denton, Texas, during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Dellamura served as FEMA’s deputy Logistics Section Chief. — SPRING 2024 14
