A 23-year-old Marine from Sacramento is among the 13 U.S. service members who were killed in Thursday's terrorist attack at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.
Sgt. Nicole Gee was a maintenance technician assigned to the Combat Logistics Battalion with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
One week before the bombing, Gee posted a photo on Instagram of her cradling a baby at the airport. "I love my job," she captioned the photo, which was also shared on the Department of Defense's Twitter page.
She posted another photo from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul just days before the tragic attack, showing the pride she took in being a Marine, standing next to a long line of evacuees fleeing the country.
"Escorting evacuees onto the bird," she wrote, adding a heart emoji.
Gee's sister, Misty Fuoco, described her as "a bright light to everyone she touched."
"Always focusing on positivity and motivating others to do their best," Fuoco wrote on a GoFundMe page raising money for travel expenses to Gee's funeral. "I've always said she is the absolute light of my life and I would do anything for her, she was my first best friend, my partner in this crazy life, my absolute hero. There are no words that will express how much she will be missed."
Fuoco said family was the most important priority in Gee's life, and they are devastated by her loss.
"She gave the ultimate sacrifice. We will forever be changed and forever hurt with her absences but I know she wouldn't have had it any other way, she absolutely loved the work she was doing in Afghanistan," Fuoco said.
Gee was a 2016 Oakmont High School graduate who enlisted in the Marines a year after she graduated, the City of Roseville wrote on Facebook, referring to Gee as a "hometown hero." The post says her husband, Jarod Gee, is also an Oakmont graduate and Marine.
"Her love for her husband and my brother in law, Jarod Gee, is unmatched," Fuoco said. "They had a bond like nothing I've ever seen and I'm so devastated that he has lost the love of his life. She was everything to Jarod, the bright sun to his life."
Friend and roommate Mallory Harrison also posted a tribute on Facebook, calling Gee "my very best friend, my person, my sister forever. My other half."
"I can't quite describe the feeling I get when I force myself to come back to reality & think about how I'm never going to see her again," Harrison wrote. "How her last breath was taken doing what she loved—helping people—at HKIA in Afghanistan. Then there was an explosion. And just like that, she's gone."
Harrison said nothing could have prepared her for the feelings of such a tragic loss.
"My best friend. 23 years old. Gone," she said. "I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine's Marine. She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world."
Gee was killed on August 26 in what the U.S. described as the most lethal day for American forces in Afghanistan since 2011. Eleven Marines, one Navy sailor and one Army soldier were killed, while at least 20 other service members were wounded. The terrorist attack, which is blamed on Afghanistan's offshoot of the Islamic State group, left more than 170 other people dead.
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