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Three acts of service: Todd Rauch ’10 defends freedom from overseas to Opelika

Todd Rauch ’10, a Purple Heart veteran, Opelika City Councilman and Auburn University psychology alumnus, has always wanted to serve.

This November, Rauch celebrates his reelection to Ward 5 of the Opelika City Council. It’s the third oath he’s taken in his life, including one in the military and one for security clearance in missile command.

Rauch hopes that his story of service, from fighting for his life in Abu Grab to fighting for your vote in Opelika, inspires others to put in the hard work.

“If I can teach one person one thing, it's that if we are just serving, just serving where you're at, everything goes away, all the troubles. That's the most important thing that we can do,” Rauch said. “We are serving the Lord and we are serving each other, and those things all combined literally make me who I am. My favorite part of the Auburn Creed is ‘I believe in work, hard work.’ Since I've gone to Auburn, that's all it is.”

Rauch wanted to make the military his career. He joined the United States Army in 2001, and two years later, when he was just 19 years old, his team was the first military police officer unit to cross the border into Iraq.

Their mission was to establish legitimate law enforcement in and around Iraq. Six months into the assignment, Rauch was training Iraqi police officers on walking patrols in Abu Grab when a remotely detonated IED exploded from underneath a truck beside him.

The explosion severely injured his right hand and shoulder. The blast knocked everyone else unconscious. Then, the ambush came. Rauch fended off four attackers with a pistol and knife, then successfully called for an extraction to Camp Victory’s Army Surgical Hospital.

Rauch had saved his teammates and earned a Purple Heart, but just two years after it started, the dream was over.

“In a fraction of a second, everything is just ripped from you,” Rauch said. “Not only do you have to move on, but you've got to rehabilitate. Coming out of such an important job as fighting in a war and being the first soldiers there and just feeling along with everyone else, I was there. We were the subject matter experts on the war in Iraq, not being there and sitting in a hospital bed, knowing that you'll never be back.”

Rauch would spend the next year and a half in physical therapy at the Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital recovering from his injuries. He worked hard to stay in the military, but his injuries were too extensive for continued service, even through West Point’s officer training.

It was a long recovery process, and Rauch didn’t know what he was going to do next.

His roommate in the hospital served in the same unit. Every Saturday, they watched Auburn football together. Later, Rauch would thank that roommate for introducing him to Auburn.

Rauch grew up in Illinois and dreamed of one day going to Notre Dame. He went to community college first, where he earned an associate degree in psychology and met his wife, Ali.

Still, Auburn was in the back of his mind. He applied as a transfer student, got accepted, and after the first visit to campus, “never looked back.” He continued to study psychology so he could support the war effort in any way he could.

“I just felt like this was where God wanted me. Auburn was where I belonged,” Rauch said. “Studying psychology here was very unique, because that service component was so strong in my heart that I knew I wanted to use it as some type of criminal profiling and continue to find bad guys and support the war fighter and do what I could.”

Rauch graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2010 and got hired by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command. There, he worked in their intelligence division in central command, focused mainly on the Middle East.

His day-to-day included everything from missiles to helicopters, learning landscapes and preparing troops and aviators for missions. He was one of the few people in the division that had seen combat and used that knowledge to better inform U.S. intelligence about how the enemy operated.

But as the years went by, the weight of the work took its toll.

“For someone like me who has seen combat and is not able to save everybody, it was tough,” Rauch said. “It was tough because I don't want to create more soldiers like me. I was blessed. I have a good support network, but being a wounded veteran is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life, and I’ve had to do it since I was 20. You’re not able to always predict what's going to happen and to keep everyone out of harm's way.”

The Rauches returned to Lee County for Ali’s new career at Chicken Salad Chick and soul-searching for Todd.

Throughout his life, Rauch has found ways to support veterans. He quickly got involved in nonprofit organizations, helped lead Beauregard’s recovery after the 2019 tornadoes and worked with wounded veterans.

That work led him to several city council meetings and commissions. He saw an opportunity to run for office, and again, it was hard work. He attended the Veterans Campaign Class in New York alongside now-Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth, knocked on more than 10,000 doors, and finally, found his purpose.

“I would not be where I'm at now had people not given me the opportunities that I had to prove myself,” Rauch said. “I believe the best thing that we can do to really support our veterans and support our prior military is taking the chance and giving them the opportunities that they deserve.”

Rauch leads from the heart and prioritizes giving everyone a seat at the table, especially veterans and prior military. As the Opelika City Councilman for Ward 5, he’s done everything from rally the community to fight plans to shut down railroad crossings to attend children’s birthday parties.

His platform is defined by consistency, transparency and perseverance. During his second term, Rauch looks forward to creating term limits for boards and committees to give more people the opportunity to lead, continue changing the culture of politics by encouraging personal connections through door-to-door visits and strengthening the relationship between Opelika and Auburn, which his mentor Ron Anders ’86 86 leads as mayor.

Rauch said like the military, local politics can feel like you’re fighting for your life, but it’s the most rewarding thing he’s ever done outside of the military, and for the same purpose he put his life on the line for: working for the American people.

“I’m a soldier, so if I’m not fighting for something, I get bored,” Rauch said. “I do not work for the city. I work for the people. The city pays me for my work, but I belong to the people. If you’ve got me here, you’ve got all of me. This is what it's about. It's taking those small little things and just being there and experiencing it. That's what life is.”

Learn more about Opelika City Councilman Todd Rauch on his Facebook page.

Tags: Alumni Psychological Sciences