When he was a little boy, Michael Campofiori always knew he wanted to be a Marine.
When he was 11, he was dealt a devastating blow; he was diagnosed with leukemia. It took five years of chemotherapy treatments, but he finally overcame the disease. His dream of joining the Marines however, continued to come up short.
“I was used to carrying my medical records because I knew the recruiters would ask me for them, but it would only take them a few seconds to say, ‘No,'” he told Military.com in December. “I didn’t get a chance to test. I didn’t get a chance to PT. It was an immediate, ‘No, we don’t need you.'”
Despite the continued rejection, Campofiori never stopped his pursuit. His dream took the New Jersey native to a recruiting station in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he met Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Falk.
“He was a person with the drive to do more with his life, and to make it to recruit training after having cancer is one in a million,” Falk told the website.
Campofiori soared to nearly perfect scores on his initial strength test, according to Military.com.
All that hard work paid off.
On Feb. 23, after going through boot camp, Campofiori finally reached his goal. An emotional video of the moment he officially became a Marine had reached nearly 1,000,000 views as of Sunday morning.
