He considered returning to coaching at his alma mater, Buhach Colony High School, where he was a three-sport letterman, or doing something fitness related. But when he heard a speaker talk about working in human resources for 30 years at a class the U.S. Army conducts for departing members, Bolser changed his mind.
“In the military, you do everything by the book. That’s why human resources kind of opened up to me,” said Bolser, said. “If you want me to do something step-by-step or you want me to learn something verbatim, I will do it. Who better than a veteran to run that side of the company?”
He got married five months before he was discharged, and his wife has a successful photo studio in Atwater, so Bolser looked into nearby California State University campuses. He reached out to three different campus veterans’ services departments, and Stan State’s Chicago Houdek was the only director to call him back.
That made his college decision pretty easy, and he has no regrets.
The 27-year-old finished his bachelor’s degree in business in 3 ½ years — “I never took off a summer or a winter,” Bolser said — and he’s hoping to complete his master’s in business administration by the end of fall 2020. Three days a week he works in the Student Veterans Center. Its employees are encouraged to serve as officers in the Stan State Veterans Club, and Bolser is president.
“We’ve been trying to gain visibility, and to get people to see we’re a club on campus,” Bolser said. “We actually have our own location. We create an atmosphere for people to feel comfortable. You don’t have to be a veteran to come in. You can be a veteran dependent or know a veteran. Everyone is welcome. It’s an area where these guys feel comfortable. They’re with a lot of like-minded people. You can share your stories with people who understand you.”
Bolser’s stories are about being an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, whose unit conducted night raids to capture high-value targets.
Having seen a television program called “Making the Cut” about various military units, Bolser knew when he joined the Army two years after graduating from high school he wanted to serve in special operations.
He’d considered attending a military academy while he was in high school, but his father, a single parent, suffered life-altering injuries in an automobile accident when Bolser was a sophomore. He and one of his brothers, 15 months his senior, suddenly were thrown into roles of caretakers and bread winners. Neither pursued their college dreams.
Bolser worked in the local Target after his 2010 high school graduation, but when his dad moved to Kansas to be near one of Bolser’s four elder brothers, Bolser enlisted.
It was June 2012, the U.S. was nine years into its war on terror and deployment was a fairly sure thing.
“For me, it’s kind of doing my part,” Bolser said. “Some people can have a calling for it.”
He deployed to Afghanistan from March to July of 2014. He returned to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he’d completed basic training, airborne training and Ranger Assessment and Selection Phase 1 (RASP 1) and started ranger school, which is necessary to climb the chain of command.
“I was just brushing my teeth first thing in the morning, and one of my buddies found me on the ground. I was still convulsing. When I came to about 30 minutes later, I was in the back of an ambulance and asked, ‘what happened?’”
CT scans and MRIs found no cause for the seizure, and when he had another one a month later despite taking medication, his doctor recommended a medical discharge.
Bolser returned to Atwater, his military career over by April of 2016.
He hasn’t had a seizure since leaving the army and he and his wife, Chelsy, are parents of six-month old Jackson, whom he calls “a bundle of joy.”
“The way things played out, the timing of everything, I wouldn’t have changed it. I don’t regret the things that happened,” Bolser said. “One thing I wish I could have done was pass ranger school instead of having seizures. Getting out in the time frame I did, so close after my wedding, my wife and I have been able to live a normal life, start a family and not have to move around. That meant a lot to me, especially after not having a traditional home life.”
That’s not to say he didn’t enjoy serving.
“It’s a very fast-paced, adrenaline-filled job,” Bolser said. “It was fun. When you actually do what you trained to do, it’s fulfilling. I didn’t lose any of my buddies when I was overseas. That was a big deal to us.”
He has lost buddies since, though, so on Veterans Day, he doesn’t think of it as a day to honor him for his service, but to honor his friend Leandro Jasso, and all the others who served and weren’t able to come home.