the MP Company that Earned It." Her second (in June 1991) was called "MP Role in the Opening of the Berlin Wall." She was selected for the Foreign Area Officer program in 1993, resulting in her attendance at the Defense Language Institute, where she learned Russian. She also learned Dari and Persian. She would later also graduate from both the University of Washington (where she earned her Master's degree in International Studies) and the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. In the late 1990s, Fontes served as a military liaison in Minsk. She spent a few years in Tajikistan serving first as a United States military representative and later as the United States Defense Attaché just as the Tajikistani Civil War was ending.