Their Story
Remembering Adrianna Vorderbruggen.
Major Adrianna M. Vorderbruggen, United States Air Force, was 36 years old when she was killed on December 21, 2015, near Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. She was leading a security foot patrol when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked it, killing her and five other Airmen. She was assigned to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, 9th Field Investigations Squadron, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and was deployed as commander of OSI Expeditionary Detachment 2405.
Adrianna grew up in Plymouth, Minnesota, where she attended Wayzata High School. She went on to the United States Air Force Academy with the Class of 2002, was a co-captain of the Academy's Division I championship women's rugby team, and commissioned as a second lieutenant on graduation.
After completing the Air Force Special Investigations Academy in 2003, she served as counterintelligence program manager at OSI Detachment 802 at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, covering the southeastern United States, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, and she deployed to Iraq.
In 2007 she was selected for her first detachment command, OSI Detachment 225 at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. In 2009 she was selected as an Air Force Institute of Technology student and earned a Master of Forensic Sciences from George Washington University. She served thirteen years in uniform and rose to the rank of major.
Adrianna was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart, and the Air Force Combat Action Medal, and she is interred at Arlington National Cemetery. She is survived by her wife, Heather Lamb, an Air Force veteran whom she married in 2012, and their young son, Jacob.