Gina Cavallaro

File:Gina Cavallaro Marines picture.jpg

Cavallaro signing her book.

Gina Cavallaro is an American journalist who has covered the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Biography

Cavallaro’s career in journalism began in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with WOSO, the island’s only English-language radio station. She then became a reporter and editor at the English-language daily newspaper, The San Juan Star. After serving for one term as the press secretary for Rep. Carlos Romero Barcelo from Puerto Rico she went to work for the Army Times, which is owned by Gannett Company, as a deputy news editor in 2001 and became a full-time staff writer in 2002.

At Army Times, she covered U.S. military operations in Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Germany and dozens of Army posts in the United States. She embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq several times. In 2005, she befriended 20-year-old Spc. Francisco Martinez in Iraq, who was assigned as her escort, and later watched him be shot and killed on patrol by an enemy sniper, a story she told in the Army Times and expanded upon in her book, Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She co-wrote Sniper with former Army Ranger Matt Larsen, who she married in 2013. The foreword is written by the 31st Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. (Ret.) Richard A. Cody, architect of the Asymmetric Warfare Group and former commander of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The book is a collection of stories and impressions from dozens of snipers -- soldiers and marines, including Rangers and Special Forces Soldiers—who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2010, Cavallaro became a senior writer at Marine Corps Times.

External links

• Biography web site for military reporters
• Gina Cavallaro writes about losing her friend, Spc. Francisco Martinez
• Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan