Pfc. Britney Moyeda, right, hugs her recruiter, Staff Sgt. Joseph Adams, on her boot camp graduation day at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego on Oct. 25, 2024. Moyeda was diagnosed with leukemia at age 12, but the cancer fight only strengthened her long-standing desire to become a Marine, she said. (U.S Marine Corps)

For newly minted Marine Pfc. Britney Moyeda, getting through boot camp was no sweat in comparison with what she had endured just to get there in the first place.

The 18-year-old was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 12 and spent the following four years receiving treatment that included multiple rounds of chemotherapy and surgery before her cancer went into remission in 2022.

With a new lease on life, Moyeda decided to chase the career she had become enamored with after seeing an elementary school classmate’s father in a Marine Corps uniform, People magazine reported in a July story just weeks before her arrival at boot camp.

Moyeda’s ambition became reality with her October graduation at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in California. She’s now at Camp Johnson, N.C., for occupational specialty school in ground supply, and she aspires to become a drill sergeant.

“I have always believed if God left me here, it’s because I have a purpose that I have to fulfill,” Moyeda told Stars and Stripes in a recent interview. “So, I went for what I wanted most, and it was to be a Marine.”

Not long after being declared cancer-free in 2022, the Houston native went to a local recruiting station, where she met with area recruiter Staff Sgt. Joseph Adams.

“I never sugar-coated anything to her,” Adams said in a recent Marine Corps statement. “I told her there was a chance that it would take months, possibly years, just to get an answer on whether she would qualify to even go to boot camp.”

Moyeda compiled more than 2,000 pages of paperwork documenting her diagnosis and treatment for the agency that medically qualifies applicants to the Corps, according to the statement.

For the next year-and-a-half, she faithfully attended weekly training and held on to the hope that it would all work out for her one day.  “Staff Sgt. Adams and I were prepared for the worst, which was not being able to enlist,” Moyeda said. Her waivers were finally approved, allowing her to take the oath of enlistment into the Delayed Entry Program, which prepares future Marines for basic training. “My mother was against it at first because she felt that she almost lost me and I’d just be leaving her,” Moyeda said. “I sat down and talked to her, explaining that it was my dream and that I was going to do it with or without her help. … I made her understand that it was my turn to make my life.”

Britney Moyeda, top, with her sister during Moyeda's cancer treatments at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, in 2018. Moyeda graduated Marine Corps boot camp in October after beating cancer four years ago. (Texas Children's Hospital)

Before she could enter boot camp, she spent about two years in and out of the gym relearning how to walk and run after her medical treatment had necessitated the use of a wheelchair.

On Oct. 25, she earned her moment at long last, walking across the parade deck in San Diego as a Marine.

Waiting to congratulate her was Adams, a reunion that surprised Moyeda.

“He didn’t write me or call me during the entire boot camp experience,” she said in the Marine Corps statement. “But when they called the dismissal, that was the first person I saw.”

Now a watch commander in the provost marshal’s office at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona, Adams said most people couldn’t fathom what Moyeda had gone through in her life.

“I am happy I was able to facilitate in getting her to where she is today,” he said in the statement. “But really, she did it all on her own.”