'Good kid' returns home safe

<p>Cora Moore of Rohnert Park would quickly tell you that a mother's concern for her son never fades.</p><p>Even if the son, Randall Moore, is 41 and a sergeant first class in the California National Guard.</p><p>Especially not while he spent the past year serving with the Petaluma-based 235th Engineer Company in Afghanistan, where the casualty rate has spiked higher than it was in Iraq during the military “surge” of 2007.</p><p>Randall's assurances — “Don't worry, mom” — that the soldiers were trained and equipped for their mission had little impact. A mother worries.</p><p>“Oh, terribly,” Cora, 76, said. “He's our only son. I can't believe he's 41.”</p><p>There was plenty to worry about this year, as U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan to date have reached 290, a rate of nearly one a day and by far the largest annual loss of the eight-year war.</p><p>But Randall, it turns out, spent most of his time “inside the wire,” as soldiers call duty on a base, handling administrative duties.</p><p>“My experience is quite different from all the other guys,” Moore said last week by e-mail from Camp Shelby in Mississippi.</p><p>He is due home today in the first of three groups of men from the 235th, expected to arrive at the Petaluma Armory after a flight from Mississippi to San Francisco.</p><p>“He wants sushi — and burritos,” said his sister, Caryn Noland of Rohnert Park. “Who knows where we'll end up for dinner.”</p><p>The family expects to be celebrating tonight, no matter what the cuisine. “We're just happy he's home safe and putting in his retirement,” Noland said.</p><p>Finding a job in the depressed economy may be a problem, but her brother is entitled to six months of unemployment benefits, Noland said.</p><p>Most immediately, he wants to get back on his dirt bike and ride over the 25 acres at his sister's home, where Randall lives in the granny unit. “He wants to know how the trails are,” she said.</p><p>Randall, who grew up in Rohnert Park and graduated from Rancho Cotate High School, enjoys a special place in Cora and Richard Moore's family: He's the only boy, with three sisters.</p><p>“He's been sort of spoiled by all of us,” Cora said.</p><p>She remembers a “good kid” who skateboarded to school and enjoyed camping with the Boy Scouts.</p><p>Noland said her brother's connection with little green Army figures may have foreshadowed his 22 years as an adult in the Army, Reserves and National Guard. “He would lay on the floor and play with them for hours,” she said.</p><p>Randall, a former print shop technician, had put in for retirement from the National Guard before the Afghanistan mission came up last year.</p><p>He put retirement on hold to deploy with his platoon. “I couldn't very well retire and watch them go off without me,” Randall said in October 2008.</p>