Photo by Bill Green Robert Smith of Frederick is an Iraq War veteran and now works in security for a local store. Purchase this photo

He will never forget the last time he saw his sister. It was the summer of 1984.

She was 2 years old. He was 4.

The siblings had the same mother, but different fathers, he said.

"I was living with her and her father."

That was the problem.

His mother wanted him to live with her.

"She came by and picked me up," Smith said.

He remembers his sister crying as he left the Germantown home.

"I remember my mom telling her, 'tomorrow,'" he said. "It never happened."

His eyes stared at the corner of an office where he works as a security officer for a department store in Frederick . He got the job shortly after his tour of duty with an Infantry unit of the Ohio National Guard ended in Iraq in 2007. He transferred to the Maryland Army National Guard when he got the security officer job.

Working as a soldier was memorable, but not as memorable as the day he lost contact with his sister.

His mother became dysfunctional, he said, and he ended up in Rockville in the home of the aunt of one of his brothers.

"My brother's side of the family raised me," Smith said. "My brother has a different dad."

His brother's cousins became his cousins. Smith never knew his own father.

A person once told him that life is like designing a coat.

"From one person, you take a button. From another, you take a sleeve," Smith said. "I made up for not having a father through my uncle."

Relationships can sometimes be built on communication and observation. That is what Smith, a Frederick resident, learned in 2006, the year he was assigned to a military police brigade in a Detainee Center in Baghdad.

"A detainee is anyone that's been captured," he said.

The center had just shy of 3,000 detainees from throughout the region.

Smith learned basic Arabic. Trial and error taught him the customs of the Arabic world. He gave up shaking hands and took to placing the palm of his hand on his chest as a form of greeting. He learned to talk to the highest chief in a group.

Before enlisting, the Seneca Valley High School graduate attended the Academy of Court Reporting in Columbus, Ohio, for 18 months.

The security and investigation courses he took there, together with his experiences in life and in Iraq have had a lasting impression, he said. He didn't get a college degree, but he found a career.

He wants to stay in private sector security.

And he is still designing his coat.