Kadena NCO named Best in Air Force

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Rey Ramon
  • 18th Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  One of Kadena's Shogun Warriors was recognized last week as the Air Force's Outstanding Postal Service NCO.

Tech. Sgt. Nelson A. Pineda, Detachment 3, Pacific Air Forces Air Postal Squadron, says he owes this honor to the individuals he works with here and those he deployed with.

"It's an individual award that I won, but I did not get there myself," he said. "I look at it in a sense that what I accomplished, it took a team to get there."

Sergeant Nelson runs the postal operations here and served a six-month deployment to Joint Base Balad, Iraq. In 2009, the sergeant directed the movement of more than five million pounds of incoming mail and near that same figure for outgoing mail on Okinawa alone. At Balad, he directed the movement of more than 12 million pounds of mail. Whether deployed or at home, Sergeant Nelson tries to think of ways to expedite mail delivery.

"I try to provide a great service to our customers or improve on a service that we already provide," said the sergeant.

Sergeant Nelson considers 2009 a good year for him: his home station detachment was inspected twice and received "Excellent" ratings on both occasion; while deployed, he was under the communications squadron that won the small units award for deployed locations and at the headquarters level as well.

"I can't complain, 2009 was a very good year," said Sergeant Nelson. "I was fortunate to have good people to work with, the leadership I had at home and my deployed location. I couldn't ask for anything better."