Meet Mattituck High School senior Rocco Horton of 106th Rescue Wing in Westhampton Beach, who battled brush fire and aims to be military pilot 

The scene outside the windows of the New York Air National Guard 106th Rescue Wing one sunny Saturday distracted Rocco Horton as he tried to answer questions about military ranks and the Airman's creed during a mandatory drill weekend.

The 18-year-old volunteer with the Cutchogue Fire Department, one of a handful of high schoolers recently sworn in to serve the base, needed a closer look at the blaze raging just beyond the facility in Westhampton Beach. "I looked out the window, I saw a huge plume of smoke," Horton recalled last month. "Then I went outside to see ... how big it was, because my dad was going to be on the truck coming this way."

Horton phoned his father, Ricky Horton, a lieutenant in the fire department, to tell him what they were both up against on March 8, the day of the Westhampton fire that scorched more than 400-acres of pine barrens just south of Sunrise Highway. Shortly afterward, while his father headed to cover the Westhampton Fire District, the teen was on the front lines of the blaze by the base, alongside firefighters with the rescue wing.

The Mattituck High School senior — who also finds time to play lacrosse and work with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities — was sworn in as an airman basic a few weeks earlier. Although he hasn't even graduated from high school, he remains focused on his eventual goal of becoming a military pilot.

After he graduates this June, Horton said he hopes to attend basic training in Texas, followed by tech school in Virginia, to become an HH-60 Pave Hawk crew chief at the Westhampton Beach rescue wing. In that role, he will inspect helicopters before and after they fly missions, balancing these duties with attending college to earn a bachelor’s degree before aiming to become a military pilot for the rescue wing, and possibly an airline pilot. 

Horton's passion for aviation runs in his blood. His father served in the United States Air Force for four years as a boom operator refueling planes midair.

"To be a part of this in the future ... I couldn’t be more proud," Horton said in an interview with Newsday at the 106th Rescue Wing earlier this month, hours before scoring two goals in a lacrosse game against Port Jefferson.

Horton is one of 68 members of the base's student flight who have not yet gone to basic training, according to Col. Glen Weir, the rescue wing’s Mission Support Group Commander who oversees recruitment. Most of these enlisted members are between the ages of 18 to 24, and Horton is the second youngest. He is one of seven high school students enlisted.

He is also the youngest of the two volunteer firefighters among the group that responded to the Westhampton fire. The other is John Lennon, 18, who graduated Riverhead High School in 2024.

Americans as young as 17 — with a guardian’s permission — can enlist in the military, Weir said. Recruiting folks in their teens and 20s is key for the Air National Guard, and not just for enlisting the pararescuemen who are tasked with jumping out of planes.

“A lot of stuff they do even in maintenance, getting on the aircraft, you have to be physically fit and agile to do quite a bit of work,” Weir said. “It’s more of a young person’s business.”

Suiting up in dad's gear

Although he was evacuated the day of the fire from the base along with other reserve members who have not yet undergone basic training, Horton had gone to his father’s car, which he drove to the base that day, and suited up in his father’s gear.

Horton headed north on Old Riverhead Road and joined the firefight to protect the base. For more than a half hour, he said he was commanding the nozzle end of the hose line stretching from an Air National Guard engine into the woods, the flames about 50 yards in front of him, "very violent" and at least 50 feet high.

"Never experienced anything close to this in my life," Horton recalled, looking at footage of the fire. "I’ve done a lot of training, but this is nowhere comparable to any kind of training that they can really put you through."

The memory of the fire, he added, "is going to stick with me as long as I can remember."

Later on that afternoon, Horton, embedded with firefighters from the rescue wing, grabbed cases of water from various ambulance companies and delivered them to those fighting fires at the Long Island Practical Shooters Association and Francis S. Gabreski Airport.

"He’s definitely motivated ... seemed like a really good guy, a young kid," Tech Sgt. Rich Bernie, one of the 106th Rescue Wing firefighters who met Horton that March Saturday, recalled in a telephone interview. "He was eager to get involved."

Lisa Horton, the 18-year-old's mother, and his father, were worried about their son that day, especially when his phone died and they lost contact with him for what Ricky described as "a long hour."

His mother recalled the day as being "definitely nerve-wracking because I didn’t hear from him. ... I went to church that night, I was crying in church." Then, she recalled "I heard from him shortly after that it was coming to an end, that he’d be able to come soon."

Horton also volunteers at his high school’s chapter of Best Buddies International, a nonprofit that seeks to include students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in all aspects of the school experience. He goes on field trips with the students, ensuring they feel included at school dances and other social functions.

Students in the school’s special-education program run the school store, which Horton goes out of his way to visit "on his periods off and just hangs with those kids," according to Caroline Wills, a special-education teacher and the adviser of the Best Buddies program. She described Horton as "a force" and "really one of a kind."

"He is such an outgoing personality and he just really shines," Wills said. "You can’t help but love him."