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Sgt. Nicole Gee, killed in Afghanistan, honored in Roseville: She ‘died doing what she loved’

A warrior and an angel. That’s how Sgt. Nicole Gee was remembered Saturday.

At her memorial service in Roseville, hundreds were in attendance to celebrate the life of the 23-year-old Marine and “hometown hero.”

Gee was killed Aug. 26 along with 12 other American service members in a suicide-bomber attack outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. Gee and others were deployed as part of a humanitarian mission to help evacuate Americans and Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban as the 20-year Afghan war drew to a close.

Gee’s name and face became well-known following her death after a photo of her cradling an Afghan baby in her arms circulated across the internet. She captioned the photo “I love my job.”

What the photo didn’t show, her aunt Cheryl Juels said, holding back tears, is the chaos that surrounded Gee on that day. Filthy and sleep-deprived from the constant “desperate screams and pleas of thousands of people surrounding them,” Gee was near the end of her shift when someone handed her a baby to comfort, Juels said. To calm the baby down amid the noise and the heat, Gee blew softly on the little girl’s face and smiled at her.

“She loved that she was making a difference, and she honestly would’ve given her life for that one single baby,” Juels said.

Family and friends said that’s who Gee was through and through, a “bright light” who loved her family, her country and her job. Despite the fear and anxiety they had over her deployment to the war-torn country, they said Gee was ecstatic at the opportunity to go across the world and serve in a war that started when she was 3 years old.

“She could have done anything she wanted and what she wanted most to do was serve her county and serve humanity,” Misty Fuoco, Gee’s older sister, said.

“There are no words to express our gratitude to Nicole for her sacrifice,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, who represents part of Placer County.

Gee, a graduate of Oakmont High School, was driven and hard-working from an early age, her family said. She was a determined student and a committed athlete. She played softball and danced while in high school. She loved baking and spending time with her family. She was dedicated to her health and worked out regularly, so much so that her family joked that Gee wrote home from boot camp complaining she wasn’t working out enough and had lost 12 lbs of muscle mass.

At 5-foot-2, Gee could deadlift 280 pounds, more than twice her body weight. She set weightlifting records at al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait.

”She was strong, determined and she was relentless,” Juels said during the 90-minute service at Bayside Church’s Adventure Campus. “We always knew she would do something great with her life.”

Her goals came into focus when she met and married her husband, Jarod Gee, whom Juels described as the love of Gee’s life. Gee eloped with him after high school and followed him into the Marine Corps, where she thrived.

Gee was assigned to Combat Logistics Battalion 24 and was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where she lived with her husband and two dogs. In her career, she was awarded the Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Medal, Afghan Campaign Medal and expert rifle qualification, 3rd award, among others. She regularly received perfect scores on her combat fitness tests.

She was deployed in January and traveled through Spain, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. While in Kuwait, she was meritoriously promoted to sergeant in August 2021.

“Although it might have seemed natural, Nicole worked extremely hard to be the person who she was,” Fuoco said.

She taught herself how to weather difficult circumstances and always sought the positive in the ugliest of situations, she added. This attitude influenced everyone around her and continued through her service in the Marine Corps. She was passionate about the future and constantly talked about wanting to mentor the next generation of Marines.

“She was a true Marine’s Marine,” Fuoco said.

The work she did in the last days of her life helped save thousands of people from oppression, torture and death, said Mallory Harrison, a friend and fellow Marine.

“Nicole died doing what she loved,” Harrison told mourners at Bayside. “She lost her life so others may live and — without a doubt — she died proud; proud of who she was, proud of what she was doing and proud to be a United State’s Marine.”