Steve Neavling

When Michelle Colby was a child, she wanted nothing more than to become a veterinarian, The Washington Post reports.

She wended her way through school and studied at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.

Still, she wanted more and became the agriculture defense branch chief for the Department of Homeland Security’s chemical and biological division, where the 39-year-old and her team established the country’s first vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease.

Now Colby and her team are finalists for the 2013 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal for homeland security and law enforcement, The Washington Post wrote.