journey

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
ROM THE HOMECOMing court at Ohio State University in 1995 to one of Saddam's former palaces in Baghdad in 2003.
It's been some journey for U.S. Army Capt. Patricia D. Cika, who graduated from Liberty High School in 1993, and is chief of operational law for the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq.
In between, Cika graduated from OSU, where she was distinguished military graduate of the Reserve Officer Training Corps and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army.
While a student at OSU, she was a member of Pi Beta Phi and the OSU rowing team, received the Edward Beanie award for campus leadership, was recognized as a top 10 senior in 1997 and served on the Pan Hellenic Council for campus sororities.
Interviewed by e-mail from Iraq, she said she loves attending Ohio State football games, and even named her Pug dog after the Ohio State mascot, Brutus the Buckeye. If she gets to see OSU play Jan. 2 in the Fiesta Bowl on TV this year, she said it will be in the middle of the night, "which is no deterrent."
After graduating from OSU, she earned her law degree attending night school at Catholic University of America Law School in Washington, D.C., while working full time for the federal government. She came back on active duty in January 2002, and served a tour in Afghanistan before being assigned to Iraq.
Her duties
Cika, 28, interprets the Law of Armed Conflict for U.S. troops in combat and teaches criminal procedure to the fledgling Iraqi police force.
She helps commanders "determine whether a target is legal, and also involves the tougher calls such as who to target in a battle space where the enemy camouflages himself as a civilian, or whether we can use certain weapons to achieve a certain effect around a sensitive site, such as a mosque or hospital."
She said a nontraditional, theater-specific duty of hers is teaching, through an interpreter, the new Iraqi security forces about human rights and basic criminal procedure.
"It is difficult to teach the concept of basic human rights to a people who have no idea that there is such a thing. I teach them the basic tenets of human rights and how to avoid abusing their power.
"Under the old regime, no citizen had any right -- to know what they were accused of, no right to a trial and no right to an attorney," she said.
"They were picked up off of the street, tortured or killed, or just disappeared and none of their families ever knew why. So I teach them they have to tell people what offense is alleged, that they have to provide them an attorney if they want one, that they can no longer force confessions through physical torture. Most of them are accustomed to a system that tortured confessions out of innocents, and the new government will not tolerate such abuses."
Missing home
It is clear from her e-mails that she misses home.
Here is how she signed off a couple of times.
"Thanks again and Merry Christmas to you and my favorite town -- Y-town."
"I miss Y-town and Ohio like crazy. Hope you all are well. Thanks and take care."But, it is equally clear from an open letter she wrote from Iraq to the people of the Youngstown area that she believes deeply in what she is doing and has found a "family" in that far-off place.
alcorn@vindy.com