2024 Inspiring Graduate | Gregory Aragon

You may have met him at church or seen him at the local grocery store. He may have even saved your life. If you've ever met Gregory Aragon, consider yourself lucky.

A Captain with Albuquerque Fire Rescue (AFR), Aragon spends his days fighting fires and responding to medical emergencies. But you may also find him studying between endless calls in his 48-hour shifts.

"I bring up the UNM website, and I find one of my classes as we're going to a call, as we're coming back from a call, as we're sitting at the grocery store," he said. "My guys will do the shopping and I'm sitting there working on my essay or whatever it is, I find the time."

After more than three decades, Aragon will finally be walking across the stage this December with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts from The University of New Mexico, all while being a full-time husband, firefighter, and student.

"I'm excited, I'm very excited to do it because I keep picking up the 2024 May graduation on YouTube, and I watch it. I have watched it about three or four times," he said. "But the reality is, when I get to that day, It's like a volcano, boom, exciting."

His academic journey started in 1988 at Western New Mexico University, where he played football briefly. He then left WNMU and joined the Air Force. During his time in the military, Aragon attended coursework at the Community College of the Air Force, was stationed overseas, and is a Gulf War veteran. After his honorable discharge from active duty, Aragon returned to Albuquerque and enrolled inschool at UNM, in 1994, for Civil Engineering. He describes his fall semester GPA as something from the movie Animal House.

"To quote part of my job, I was definitely on life support. I ended up with a 1.33 because I was so worried about the Air Force, and at the time I was in the Guard, and we had to deploy," he said. "At the end of 1994, UNM basically asked me to go away for a little while."

But it wasn't all bad that semester, Aragon says the best thing in his life came from his time on campus. He met his wife right here at UNM. A coffee date turned into a paper route together and then in February of 1995, he popped the big question.

His wife would later be why he wound up in the fire department, telling him one day on their paper route to check out AFR. In 1996, Aragon tried out with Albuquerque Fire Rescue, however, he didn't get a callback. From there, he got his EMT License at Technical Vocational Institute, now Central New Mexico Community College, and gave Kirtland Fire a ring, where he worked for the next five years.

However, his mindset about giving Albuquerque Fire another try never stopped and in 2001, AFR opened their hiring process up again. Aragon put his name in the hat and out of 2,500 applicants, he and 22 others were picked.

"The phone rings and it's the Fire Chief from the Academy in Albuquerque and he says, hey so your name came up, we want to pick you up, what do you think? I said yeah, okay let's do this," Aragon said.

After a short pause during 9/11, Aragon started with AFR in October of that year where he was eventually promoted to Captain in 2014.

"I'm back in the saddle working with Albuquerque Fire and I felt like I made it," he said. "But I just had that itch, I have to get back to UNM because I'm not done yet. I want to get that degree and finish it off."

Slowly over the following years, Aragon started taking a few classes, this time hitting A's. "I'm in, I'm hooked. I got A's, I'm back, and now my GPA went from a 1.33 to I think I hit a 1.57, so I was on my way," he said.

During that time, Aragon found himself near death in 2013. While off duty in late April, he attended church at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church on Albuquerque's west side. By the end of mass, he says a man started assaulting and stabbing members of the choir and the director. Aragon quickly reacted by running up to the assailant and stopping his violent actions, before others rushed in to help. Once the assailant was secured and removed outside of the church, Aragon says he went back to see who else may have been harmed inside. A parishioner handed him a cell phone with blood on it and told him it was 911 on the other end. Aragon says he wiped the phone clean a few more times before realizing he had been stabbed and was bleeding from his head. Aragon was hospitalized and later released.

"I could have died, it was bad, but I didn't," he said. "This education. I'm still alive to do this."

That was another push to finish his degree. He took advantage of the state's opportunity scholarship that aims to cover nearly all tuition and fees for New Mexico students who qualify. Aragon says if it weren't for Brian Vineyard, supervisor of academic advisement for University College, and Corine Gonzales, strategic project director for the Division of Enrollment Management, he wouldn't be graduating. "I get choked up when I think about them because they're my heroes. They got me back, all the way back," he said.

While Aragon says it was tough juggling a demanding job, a family, and school, somehow he did it, and from the outside, he made it look easy.

"Now, I'm sitting at a 4.13. I can't believe this, and I have been doing this married, full-time job, full-time family, full-time student. Wow." he said.

His 34-year journey to graduation, while serving his country and local community in between, couldn't have been accomplished without many of his friends and family, his fire crew, and most importantly, his wife of 30 years.

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