New FFSC director comes home to Ventura County

The new director of the Fleet & Family Support Center (FFSC) at Naval Base Ventura County has come full circle.

Laura Hamilton, who started in the job in early December, grew up near Point Mugu, where her father was an engineer on the Harpoon missile project at what was then the Pacific Missile Test Center. She graduated from Channel Islands High School.

Hamilton then spent some time experiencing the life of many who walk through the doors of the FFSC: She became a military spouse.

“Things were different then,” she says. “Services like those offered through the FFSC weren’t available. I was a young newlywed, making my first move away from home.”

The challenges took a toll, and by 1986, Hamilton was back in Ventura County with her two children. She began a long career with Ventura County Human Services.

In 2005, Hamilton was hired as the deputy director of the Yuma County Health Department, a position she held for five years. She also earned a degree in business management from the University of Phoenix.

In 2010, she decided to try something entirely different.

“I’d worked for county government my whole career,” she said. “So I applied for a position at the Yuma Proving Ground.”

The Army facility, which conducts weapons testing, hired Hamilton as a contract employee in facilities maintenance and construction.

“I had to learn a lot of construction terminology very quickly,” she said.

Planning, estimating, supplies, acquisitions, payroll, service orders, even information technology came under her purview.

When the two-year contract ended, she was ready to leave “things” and return to “people.”

“I am a real people person,” she said. “I missed that connection to clients. I learned that I need to be involved in social services — that’s what I do, and that’s what I’m good at.”

She was thrilled to be named the new director of the FFSC and return to Ventura County.

“If we can make people’s lives better, even in a small way, that’s important,” she said. “That’s what counts.”

From personal experience, she knows the difference the FFSC can make, from lessons in financial management to preparing for deployment to a simple toddler group where parents can chat about military life while their youngsters play.

“I would have given a lot to have gotten together with a group of other mothers,” she said. “Many of these young people have no family or friends in the area. They need to come together as their own support group, their own community.”

Hamilton will be heading up the opening of the new FFSC office at Catalina Heights, the military housing development in Camarillo. There’s currently a temporary office in the Catalina Heights Child Youth Center, but a permanent office will soon open on Calle la Roda.

Hamilton is glad to be back in Ventura County for a couple of other reasons.

First, she’s closer to her now-grown children. Her daughter is a homemaker in Temecula, and her son is an Army captain in Puyallap, Wash.

And the other reason?

“Strawberries,” she says. “You cannot get a strawberry anywhere else like you can here.”