Chance Rollins hasn’t been out of high school long, but he’s accomplished a lot in a short time. From serving in the Marines, becoming a fulltime farmer and starting a family, Rollins is busy and happy with his life.
Rollins graduated from Dublin High School in 2022. His junior year, Rollins had enlisted with the Marine Corps, and two months after he graduated, he headed out to basic training. “It’s a family tradition,” he said. “My dad, my uncle, my grandpa, they were all Marines. Pretty much everybody in my family has been in the military.”
Rollins first went to basic training in California. “It was 13 weeks of absolute hell,” he said. “I enjoyed every minute of it. It was probably the toughest 13 weeks I went through until I became a dad.”
After boot camp, he went to combat training for three months, and then came home for a few weeks on recruiters duty. “We’d go out, talk to kids in high school, people about our age, and be like, ‘Yeah, you should go do this. There’s all these cool things you can get pre college.”
After that, he was sent to Jacksonville, North Carolina, where he was stationed at Camp Johnson to learn to be a diesel mechanic. “I was there for eight and a half more months, and that was them teaching me how to work on diesel motors and the trucks and all that,” he said.
Once he finished his training, he was sent back to Texas to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene as a diesel mechanic in the reserves. “I only go once a week or once a month for like, three or four days down to Abilene to do military stuff,” he said.
“Most of my time is either spent taking care of the Marines that I’m put over,” he said. “I’ve got four Marines under my command. I’m one of the older guys at 22 and I spend a lot of time helping them, telling them what I did wrong and what I did right, money wise and with job avenues.”
When he got back, Rollins moved back to Dublin and bought a house alongside his parents, Ray Rollins and Jamie Brewer. “We all kind of live on the same property now,” he said. “We have a good compound going,” he said.
He also found a full time job as a farmer. Rollins does custom farming, growing corn, sorghum, hay and other crops for his clients. “On an average day for me, I wake up before the sun, I get on a tractor, and I farm ‘til after the sun goes down,” he said.
Rollins is happy with his current situation, and doesn’t plan on changing much in the coming years. “I just made a deal on my house, so I’ve got about two years left on paying that off,” he said. “And after that, I’ve already got my eyes set on another piece of property that I want to buy and probably build another little house. It’s right outside of Dublin. It’s got a little stock pond on it, and I think it’s like 13 acres. My grandma’s got it, and I want to buy it from her.”
Rollins lives with his wife, Michaella, who he met through his mom. He needed a date for the Marine Corps Ball one year, and his mom said, “Well, I know this really nice girl that you could take with you.”
The two immediately hit it off. “I got butterflies in my stomach, the whole nine yards,” he said.
They dated for a few more months, and then married last September. The Rollins have a four month old daughter, Cirilla Katherine Nicole Rollins, who was born on December 25 of last year. “She was the best Christmas present I could have ever asked for,” Rollins said.
When he has some free time, Rollins enjoys spending time with his family. Throughout his life, he’s found inspiration from his father, Ray Rollins.
“As far back as he can remember, he said he was going to do three things in life: he said he was going to be a Marine, he was going to be a welder, and he was going to be a firefighter, and he has, on and off, done those three things his entire life,” Rollins said. “When I was growing up, his biggest sources of pride were the Marine Corps and his family. And I guess I kind of grew up seeing that and like, yeah, that that makes sense. That’s been my biggest sources of pride in my life, my Marines and my family.”
At times, Rollins has struggled with self doubt. “There’s been a lot of times where either my own inside thoughts or comments that people from the outside have made about me or to me have hit home and made me think, ‘Maybe I don’t have what it takes to get where I want to be in life,’” he said. “But finally, one day, I woke up and I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s take all those doubts and go ahead and prove them wrong. Let’s be the person that they don’t think I can be.’” Rollins credits a lot of his success right now to his wife. “Having that person there that I would always know I can count on — she’s helped me grow up a lot in the past year,” he said.
Rollins offers the following advice to Dublin graduates: “Just follow your gut,” he said. “When I was in high school and I said I’m going to go into the military and then I’m going to be blue collar after I get done with it, a bunch of my teachers kind of looked at me funny, like that’s not gonna work out for you. But I just trusted my gut.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.