Army Spc. Jaime Rodriguez Jr., 19, Carpinteria; dies in roadside blast

After graduating from high school in 2005, Jaime Rodriguez Jr. struggled to find a goal he could believe in. His mother, Dulce Soto, remembers him admitting that he didn’t like school much. But he enjoyed learning new things and wanted to grow as a man.

So the summer after leaving Carpinteria High School, Rodriguez told his mother that he wanted to join the Army, mainly because he admired the military and thought it was a good alternative to going to college.

Soto supported his choice, but not the war in Iraq, praying every day after his enlistment that her son wouldn’t become one of the casualties. Two weeks after his 18th birthday in October 2005, Rodriguez left for six months of basic training at Ft. Knox, Ky.

“When he came back, everyone noticed how he seemed more serious and focused on his commitment to the Army,” Soto said, sitting in her Carpinteria home across from school portraits of the smiling teenager still sporting a pre-Army, moppy hairstyle. “I even noticed in the way he hugged me that he had changed,” Soto said. “He didn’t hug me with both arms curled around me like he did as a kid, but instead brought me in with one arm firmly, with just enough space to lean in and kiss his cheek. It was still warm, but just different, more like a man.”

Soto marvels how two years in the Army transformed the scrawny little kid with a big nose whom she’d nicknamed Pollito -- Spanish for a baby chicken -- because of the yellow pajamas she dressed him in as an infant.

Jaime Rodriguez Jr. was born to Soto and Jaime Rodriguez Sr. in Santa Barbara on Oct. 18, 1987, the middle child between his sister, Elizabeth, 24; and brother, Alex, 15. After his parents separated in 1993, Rodriguez, his siblings and their mother moved to Carpinteria and later to Oxnard, where his mother lived when he enlisted. In July, Soto moved back to Carpinteria, where most of Rodriguez’s close friends live.

Rodriguez would eventually grow into another nickname picked by his buddies on his high school cross-country and track teams: Gandhi, because of his round, wire-rimmed eyeglasses and skinny, 5-foot-11 frame. “He wasn’t the star, but enjoyed being part of the team,” his mother said.

It was the team mentality that Rodriguez found so appealing about the Army. He told his family as much after returning home in March 2006 from basic training at Ft. Knox. Soon after, he was sent to Ft. Stewart, Ga. After his final trip home for Thanksgiving last year -- the last time his family saw him -- Rodriguez was eventually deployed to Iraq on Jan. 14.

As a cavalry scout in the 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Ft. Stewart, Rodriguez took part in foot and vehicle patrols, combat and search operations, and worked with the Iraqi army, his relatives said. On July 26, the 19-year-old was killed along with two other soldiers in his unit when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in Saqlawiya, northwest of Baghdad.

In addition to his parents and siblings, he is survived by his paternal grandparents, Ben and Eloisa Rodriguez.

During his last five-minute phone call to his mother July 4, Soto said, her son asked about how the family was doing and pleaded with her to avoid watching news segments on the war in Iraq. “ ‘Don’t worry, mom. I’ll be OK,’ is what he’d always tell me at the end of a call,” Soto said. “We were very close, and he was always open to talking to me about anything. But he never wanted me to worry. I know he’d still be telling me that today.”

francisco.varaorta@ latimes.com