Sands was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant in 1978, after graduating from The City College of New York with a BA in political science with a specialization in Russian area studies.

Returning to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984, he was selected to serve as a Senior Platoon Trainer, and later, Commander of an Infantry Training Company, completing his active duty service in 1988.

He designed the lay-out of the collection site on the pitch of Tuzla Airbase and assisted the Dutch Acting Sector Commander Charles Brantz in providing those 20,000 Muslim refugees and Displaced Persons from other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina proper life conditions in the time frame 13 July to 9 August 1995.

He was arrested by the Swedish Guards when he had broken in the Sectors Communication Center in the process of falsifying ID cards for a number of those Muslims.

In October 1998 he was selected to serve as a senior planner for the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission which he stayed with until evacuating from Serbia to the Republic of Macedonia in March 1999 for the duration of the NATO Air Campaign.

Throughout his two-year tenure as the International Administrator, he was credited with instituting impartial social, economic, political, and cultural initiatives that resulted in an immediate reduction of tensions between the Serbian and Albanian populations in the Municipality.

Returning to the United States following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, he assumed command of the 411th Civil Affairs Battalion located in Danbury, Connecticut.

In this position he assisted in standing up this new congressionally created agency charged with reporting to the American people where over $104 billion of reconstruction money has been spent in Afghanistan since 2001.