Rich Wiley

Capt. Rich Wiley is disproving the old saying that you can’t go home again. After joining the U.S. Navy to become a fighter pilot in 1990, and having little say in where he would serve during his career, Wiley didn’t expect he’d get to return to the county he came to love as the son of a Greenfield farming family. To his surprise the Navy awarded him a new command at the Naval Support Activity Monterey, and he returned home when he took over on Dec. 9, 2016.

The Naval Support Activity is the organization that keeps the base running for the Naval Postgraduate School, the Navy Defense Lab and about a dozen other tenant commands located on 625 acres in Monterey. Wiley, who once served as an air boss choreographing troops and jets on aircraft carriers, now leads a staff of 325, mostly civilians, from housekeepers to environmental engineers.

In Wiley’s new role, he is effectively the mayor and city manager of a small city, but he deflects credit away from himself to his team, something he does constantly, whether talking about catapulting and landing jets at the rate of one a minute, or accumulating more than 3,400 flight hours with nearly 800 carrier landings.

Weekly: What was it like growing up as part of a farming family in Greenfield in the ’60s and ’70s?

Wiley: It was fantastic and I did not appreciate it as much until I went away to college at Berkeley. We were primarily row crops; we did have some cattle and sheep on our properties. It was a lot of work during the summer, but it was also fantastic, because even getting back to it now, the most genuine people in the world I’ve met are from [the Salinas Valley], and [the Monterey Peninsula] as well. It’s very, very family-oriented.

Even now will I go back and talk to friends from [the Salinas Valley] who instilled a work ethic that, unfortunately for the staff, keeps me going from early morning to night. As I say, the Navy has shaped me, but I am born-and-bred Salinas Valley.

What inspired you to become a Navy pilot?

Different things drive you to the military. You are either attracted to it or you’re not. It always captivated me. I worked in the financial industry as a financial analyst for two years out of Berkeley, so I didn’t go right into the military. I was applying to graduate schools, and the Navy called – I had signed up and taken the test and done OK. I was pursuing both SEALs and pilot [positions]. It’s a finite gene pool that wants to be cold, wet, dark and hungry at the same time, and I’m missing one of those [genes].

Serving as an air boss sounds intense.

Carrier aviator 101: Nothing moves on the boat without the permission of the air boss. You have 45 combat aircraft on the roof, which is on the flight deck, and they’re inches apart. Choreography is a huge thing to the boat, because nothing moves without the air boss, so you don’t run them into each other. The stab on a Rhino, on a Super Hornet, costs over $2 million… So it’s not just a dent in the Wiley Suburban, it’s a big deal.

I hear you played football and baseball for King City High School. What positions did you play?

If it sounds like I’m clapping myself on the back, I am not, because I was not the star of the team by any means, but those were very good memories. We didn’t have Greenfield and Soledad high schools at the time, so King City and Gonzales were big rivals, and Paso Robles was a rival of ours, Atascadero down to the south. It was great. I was a catcher and third base in baseball, and in football I was a defensive back, slot back receiver. We won the championship my last year.

What’s your favorite part about being back in Monterey County?

Being back in Monterey County. It’s wonderful. To say I wanted to come back here 30 years ago or 10 years ago or even a year ago, I’d be fooling you, I didn’t know it would be an option. It’s awesome to know I can get back into my car and go east on Highway 68 and right on River Road and in 45 minutes be at my dad’s house.