Jose witnessed the struggle of his parents and his neighbors who lived in the rougher parts of his hometown and knew early on that he wanted something completely different. He wanted the structure and honor of military life. Jose was especially close to his grandfather and remembers him telling stories about his time in the Army and singing Army songs. Jose longed for the day when he could enlist, and in 2007 he joined the United States Marine Corps.

Following boot camp, Jose graduated at the top of his class in Military Police School and received the Top Dog Award for his outstanding performance in the K-9 Handlers Course. Jose spent two more years training military dogs stateside before serving in Okinawa, Japan. Then, in the summer of 2011, he was deployed and attached to the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion in the upper Sangin Valley of Afghanistan where he participated in over fifty combat missions with his bomb dog, Zenit.

On a typical Sunday for the unit, Jose and his platoon conducted a security patrol in an area known for being laden with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). As Jose searched for IEDs with Zenit, he stepped on a pressure plate containing over ten pounds of homemade explosives. “I woke up five days later in Landstuhl, Germany, and realized I had lost both of my legs above the knees.”

Jose was medically-evacuated to the United States, where he underwent thirteen operations followed by the long process of physical rehabilitation. "Coming home from the hospital was very hard. Because you're faced with all of the challenges that used to be so simple. It was a hard point for me. I was 23 and I went from being a warrior in Afghanistan, the tip of the spear, to being stuck in a wheelchair and unable to even carry a bowl from the counter to the table."