Last week, after the students had left a rural Pennsylvania school about 70 miles west of Scranton, DEA administrators and colleagues gathered there to remember a fallen agent, an alma mater of Hughesville High School, according to the Sun Gazette.
Chad Michael, 30, assigned to the DEA Miami Division, was one of three DEA agents killed in a helicopter crash in October 2009 in Afghanistan along with seven service men. The other DEA two agents were Michael Weston and Forrest N. Leamon. The men were targeting opium production in western Afghanistan.
Michael served in the DEA’s Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Team, or FAST. In addition to Michael’s parents-mother Debra Hartz and stepfather Dr. Leo Hartz-also attending were the DEA’s Richard Crock and Richard Michael, the local school board president of whose district Michael graduated from high school.
The celebration came during the DEA’s “Red Ribbon Week” which calls upon organizations, parents, and educators to reinforce the dangers of drug abuse with children.
The school district created the Chad Michael Memorial Scholarship after his passing in service, which has gone to a graduate now attending the University of Pittsburgh and studying criminal justice. The scholarship, ranging from $500 to $1,000, is reserved for students intending to study criminal justice, as Michael had. Prior to Micheal’s DEA service he was a deputy Sheriff in Tampa Bay, Fla.
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