Sean Michael Lee dedicated his life to serving others.
The Army veteran with more than 20 years of military experience spanning multiple deployments and companies — including as a paratrooper for the vaunted 82nd Airborne Division — did not retire his commitment to help others when he finished his military career.
“His entire life was in service to others. Up until the very end, Sean was always thinking of others,” Steven Rozina told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
Rozina, now the deputy chief operating officer for the nonprofit Independence Fund, which helps provide services and support to wounded veterans, met Lee when he too joined the nonprofit to continue his career of service.
“He immediately took me under his wing as somebody to teach you how to help others,” Rozina told Fox News Digital.
Rozina outlined Lee’s impressive post-military resume, which spanned three continents, in his efforts to continue helping people.
“I think it was 2021, the fall of Afghanistan. Sean answered that call again. He helped evacuate thousands of our Afghan allies, people that worked with us, people that are our friends, that are still our friends today,” Rozina explained.
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“He got done with that mission and Sean answered the call again. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he went to Poland,” Rozina said. “He helped set up aid stations, helped set supply lines. And even when a Fox News reporter, Benjamin Hall, was injured and was essentially lost, Sean was that guy that helped organize the efforts to bring Benjamin home. Sean was never the guy on the front page of the paper, but he was always there.”
Coordinating a rescue operation from Poland via another nonprofit group, Save Our Allies, Lee was instrumental in the efforts to bring Hall home after a Russian attack badly wounded him while he was reporting on the war near Kyiv.
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In 2024, Lee again jumped into action when Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the Southeast, including his home state of North Carolina — particularly its western mountains.
“Within a few hours, Sean was in the car, and he was headed up to the mountains,” Rozina told Fox News Digital.
“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 mountains, he lived in tents, stayed 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 Fox News Digital.
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“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 thought 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 not going to fade.”
