SANTA RITA, Guam — Coast Guard Station Apra Harbor has a new leader. Senior Chief Petty Officer Calvin Hernandez took command of the station Tuesday, relieving Chief Warrant Officer Kyle Breen-Tapia in a ceremony at Top o’ the Mar overseen by Capt. Jessica Worst, who leads Coast Guard Forces Micronesia and Sector Guam.
The handoff closes a demanding year for the station. Over 12 months, Breen-Tapia oversaw 51 active duty and reserve personnel who logged more than 2,500 hours underway and ran over 500 missions across some of the Pacific’s most remote waters. His crews helped 106 people and protected more than $1 million in property in that span.
Several of those cases stand out. Crews pulled 45 passengers off a boat crippled by an engine fire, recovered a survivor found clinging to the hull of a capsized vessel 20 nautical miles off Agat, and reached two mariners stranded at Tarzan Cave as the tide turned dangerously against them.
The station also absorbed a direct hit from Super Typhoon Sinlaku in April. Breen-Tapia steered the unit’s storm preparation and recovery, work that helped bring the Port of Guam back online within two days of the typhoon clearing the island. During his tenure he also brought more than $500,000 in infrastructure funding to the station, filled 11 vacant positions to restore round-the-clock watch coverage and made Apra Harbor the pilot site for the Coast Guard’s Digital Seabag program.
“Leading the men and women of Station Apra Harbor has been the privilege of my career,” Breen-Tapia said. “This crew met every challenge this region threw at them, from Super Typhoon Sinlaku to search and rescue cases in some of the most unforgiving conditions in the Pacific, and never once flinched. I will carry their example with me wherever I serve.”
Breen-Tapia, a Maryland native who enlisted in 2011, previously ran Station Indian River Inlet in Delaware and is headed next to the cutter USCGC Stone. Hernandez arrives at Apra Harbor from the Pacific Northwest, where he built his career standing surfman duty along the Oregon and Washington coasts and earned his permanent Surfman insignia at Station Tillamook Bay in 2020. The Central Texas native most recently served as executive petty officer at Station Yaquina Bay, Oregon.
He inherits a station tempered by a year of storms and hard rescues, and tasked with the same job that has defined it: keeping watch over mariners across the far waters of the Marianas.
