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Janesvillian greets family, hometown, from Iraq

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Sgt Carrie Vobian of Janesville, Wisconsin got a visit from THE EARLY SHOW’s Dave Price. Vobian is serving in Iraq with the III Corps out of Fort Hood, Texas. This is Price’s sixth consecutive tour with STARS FOR STRIPES, a group that specializes in bringing entertainment to some of the most remote Forward Operating bases in the war zone.

JANESVILLE — Vickie and David Vobian can’t talk to their daughter as often as they’d like because she’s with the U.S. Army in Iraq.

They check Facebook regularly just to see what Carrie Vobian has posted and to be reassured she’s still OK.

So it was a wonderful holiday gift Dec. 29 when Carrie appeared on national television.

Carrie was among a group of soldiers at Camp Victory near Baghdad treated to a visit from Dave Price, the weather anchor for CBS’s “Early Show.”

Carrie was able to call at 3 a.m. Janesville time to tell her parents to watch the show.

There was Carrie, holding a sign she had made. “Good morning, Janesville, Wisconsin!” it read.

Price has made several trips to entertain troops overseas with the Stars for Stripes organization. He didn’t just walk away after transmitting his standup back to the States. Noticing the sign, he said he knew Janesville was a General Motors town, Vickie said.

Then he corrected himself: “Excuse me, an ex-GM town.”

Price asked how Janesville was doing in the wake of the plant shutdown.

“Carrie said, ‘You know, he really listened,’ and she was impressed,” Vickie said.

In the corner of Carrie’s sign was “#12.” That was Carrie’s number when she was a sharp-shooting 3-point specialist with the Janesville Parker High School basketball team in the late 1990s.

The attachment to the Parker girls basketball program remains strong for many of the girls, Vickie said. Before she left for Iraq, Carrie got a chance to play with current team members at a practice.

Carrie’s sign, which had gotten Price’s attention, was the tip of the iceberg as far as her art abilities go. Vickie said her daughter has been commissioned to create murals in Army headquarters buildings wherever she’s been stationed, including South Korea.

Carrie joined the Army in 2005. Now a sergeant, she recently reenlisted and volunteered for Iraq, her mother said.

“It was very hard for us when it happened, as she’s our only girl. But she’s so happy,” Vickie said.

Vickie was at work at Riverview Clinic on Nov. 5 when she got a call from Carrie, who was at Fort Hood, Texas, preparing to leave with her unit for Iraq. Carrie assured her mother that she was all right, and then she realized her mother didn’t know.

That was the day of the tragic shootings of 13 people at Fort Hood. Carrie had been with her unit at the processing center where the shootings took place but was gone before the attack began.

Carrie left for Iraq two weeks after the shooting. She is scheduled to return to the United States in November.