Article by Phil Attinger, Highland News-Sun.  https://www.midfloridanewspapers.com/highlands_news-sun/zachary-lavoys-mission-was-to-help-others/article_7586257a-9480-11ee-895b-abf6da014530.html

By all accounts, Zachary Lavoy, whether playing sports at Lake Placid High School or building his faith at First Presbyterian Church of Lake Placid, wanted to help people.

He spent a life watching his mom Gabriela Lavoy, a nurse then at AdventHealth Lake Placid, take care of people in the emergency room.

In 2013, just a few years after graduation, he enlisted with the military, rising to the rank of Tech. Sgt. Zachary E. Lavoy, a medical operations flight chief with the U.S. Air Force.

“He wanted to be a mentor,” said Gabriela, now a family nurse practitioner in Odessa, Texas. “He had this infectious smile all the time. It made people comfortable with him.”

Stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan, Zachary had recently proposed to his girlfriend in Texas, and she said yes, Gabriela said. All he had left to do was get to Texas — he was scheduled for leave on Dec. 16 — present the ring, have it sized, and then spend Christmas with his mom and then he and his fiancée would visit her family in Lubbock, Texas.

“All he wanted for Christmas was to come home and see me,” Gabriela said.

Gabriela said he had plans about getting out of the military, because it’s hard to have a family on active duty, constantly transferred and deployed. He wanted to go back to school to be a physician’s assistant, then settle down with his new wife and future kids in the Tampa area.

They already had friends looking at houses for them.

Unfortunately, Zachary, 33, of Oviedo, was among the eight Airmen killed on Nov. 29, just after Thanksgiving, when a U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey crashed on a training mission near Yakushima Island, Japan. He was assigned to the 1st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing, Kadena Air Base, Japan.

The Air Force Special Operations Command released his and the other names on Dec. 5 after finding the aircraft.

For most of that week, Gabriela couldn’t sleep. Both she and her son’s fiancée stayed with each other, holding each other up, she said.

“She drove all the way from Dallas. I don’t know what I would have done without her support,” Gabriela said of her son’s fiancée, also in the medical field as a registered nurse. “She’s going through this with me. I don’t know what I’d have done without her, probably sleeping in my bed for days at a time.”

The grief comes in waves, Gabriela said: “We have periods of crying. We were calling Japan time, staying up late, waking up late, to call his commanding officer.”

Every time they called, there were no updates.

“We never lost hope. He is a super-strong swimmer, was very strong physically and mentally. We thought, ‘Maybe he’s in one of the islands,’” Gabriella said.

Zachary competed in swimming at Lake Placid High, but also track and field, and then soccer.

“His first love was swimming,” Gabriela said. “He used to say, ‘When I die, I want to be in a swim meet because they last forever.’”

He cared about keeping in shape, she said, because that meant he could take care of people.

He watched her caring for people after Hurricane Charley in 2004 at Florida Hospital, now AdventHealth, and helped bring water to the patients.

“I think he loved medicine because I was a nurse,” Gabriela said, adding that he wanted to be the doctor. “He’s telling you what to do. He wanted to be the ‘director of the orchestra.’”

The last time Gabriela spoke to her son was at their regular Facetime call on the day before the crash. She was venting to him about a conflict she had with someone.

His advice, she said, was to just pray for that person.

“He sent me a picture of his devotional [that day] and said, ‘Let it go,’” Gabriela said. “It was notes he had taken about God’s perfect timing. He said if this person was being not so nice, I should just pray for them and let it go.”

Was she worried about him? When he first enlisted, yes, given the state of world politics. He was in Special Forces, which meant he could never say where he went before or after a mission.

After 10 years in the service, with no incidents, she worried a little less.

“I told him to be careful. He was concerned about his teammates at all times,” she said. “So many people reached out to me on how he mentored them. Mostly people in the Air Force. He wanted them to be better at whatever job they had.”

*The preceding content is not intended as a comprehensive biography, but it highlights their significance as a result of military or civilian distinction, lasting achievements, or association with impactful national events. 

Photo of Zachary LaVoy and his mother, Gabriela.  Photo by Gabriela LaVoy.

ZACHARY EMMETT LAVOY

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