Fellow Vet Honors Late Paratrooper Who Helped Afghans, Helene Victims

Sean Michael Lee spent his life answering the call to serve others.

After more than two decades in the Army, including multiple deployments and service as a paratrooper with the renowned 82nd Airborne Division, Lee carried that same mission into civilian life rather than stepping away from it.

“His entire life was dedicated to serving other people. Right up until the end, Sean was always focused on how he could help someone else,” Steven Rozina told News Media in an exclusive interview.

Rozina, the deputy chief operating officer of the nonprofit Independence Fund, which provides support and services for wounded veterans, first met Lee after he joined the organization to continue his longtime commitment to service.

“He immediately took me under his wing and showed me how to help other people,” Rozina told News Media.

Lee’s work after leaving the military took him across three continents, as he continued finding ways to assist people caught in conflict and crisis, Rozina said.

“I believe it was in 2021, during the fall of Afghanistan, that Sean answered the call once again. He helped evacuate thousands of Afghan allies — people who worked alongside us, people who were and remain our friends,” Rozina said.

“When that mission ended, Sean answered another call. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he went to Poland,” Rozina said. “He helped establish aid stations and supply routes. And when Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was wounded and essentially missing, Sean was one of the people organizing the effort to get Benjamin home. Sean was never the person on the front page, but he was always there.”

Working from Poland with the nonprofit Save Our Allies, Lee played a key role in the rescue effort that brought Hall home after the journalist was severely injured in a Russian attack while reporting near Kyiv during the war in Ukraine.

In 2024, Lee again jumped to action when Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the Southeast, including his home state of North Carolina — particularly its western mountains.

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“Within a few hours, Sean was in the car and he was headed up to the mountains,” Rozina told News Media.

“I spent a lot of time with Sean up in the mountains. I got the call, and he needed me to come with him and we slept in our cars and helped set up aid for different communities,” Rozina continued.

However, Rozina explained, “when many of us went home, Sean stayed.”

“Sean stayed in the mountain, he lived in tents, stayed with with communities that didn’t have a lot, helped rebuild family homes, helped rebuild… there was a family store that, it was the only thing that these people had, and he was there, he was always there for somebody else,” Rozina explained.

Lee died Tuesday as a result of cancer he developed from exposure to toxic burn pits during his time deployed in the Middle East. He was still working out how to keep helping people until the very end of his life, Rozina said.

“I have a text message from last week where he’s making plans for the next mission. The next thing that he wanted to do to make sure if another hurricane hits North Carolina, how are we going to respond? If an earthquake happens, where are we gonna go and how can we be more efficient? How can we help more people?” Rozina told News Media.

“Sean, in his own words, was a good ‘idea fairy.’ Sean came up with great ideas and really it was… Sean’s plans were to be prepared, always be prepared. And it was ideas on how can we be prepared for the next emergency, the next time a veteran needs us, how can [we] incorporate our veteran community into helping others? And that was his goal was really to spread who he was, that ‘send me’ ethos,” Rozina said.

Lee’s work, through the Independence Fund and through Save Our Allies, was about helping people and using his own gifts and talents to do so, Rozina explained.

When asked what he think Sean’s final message to the world would be, he said, “Any help is still help.”

“You might feel like you’re not doing much, but doing something means a lot. So, do what you can,” Rozina said of his late friend. “Do the best you can when you’re doing it. And do it with a grateful heart. What Sean did, he did the best he could at everything. And those little things add up in the end. He’s touched so many lives. He has blessed a lot of deserving people and I know that his memory is is not going to fade.”