In April 2004, Joe Ruggiero was a petty officer serving with a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment aboard the Navy’s USS Firebolt in the Persian Gulf. Ruggiero and a team of Coast Guardsmen and sailors were conducting a boarding operation near an oil terminal when the boat they were intercepting detonated in an apparent suicide bombing, killing two sailors and one Coast Guardsman. For his actions that day, Ruggiero, now a Chief Warrant Officer 2, became the first Coast Guardsman since the Vietnam War to earn a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with V.