Bravest in chopper crash worked to honor fallen vets
IN A CHILLING twist of fate, one of the FDNY members who died in a military helicopter crash in Iraq led an effort to honor fallen soldiers just two years earlier.
Christopher “Tripp” Zanetis was a top student at Stanford Law School when he helped discover a forgotten bronze plaque dedicated to alumni who gave their lives while serving in the armed forces in World War II.
Zanetis and some other vets went on to organize a full military ceremony in 2016 for the rededication of the plaque honoring the 18 soldiers, said his friend Benjamin Haas.
The plaque had sat in storage since being moved in 1975.
“He played a pivotal role in arranging that ceremony,” said Haas, 31, an Army veteran and third-year student at Stanford Law.
“I never would have anticipated at the time that he’d be counted among the ranks of the Stanford Law school community members who have died in war.”
“He exemplified the best of Stanford Law School and the military,” Haas said.
Zanetis, 37, died Thursday when his Pave Hawk chopper struck a power line and went down along the Syrian border.
The crash killed a total of seven service members, including FDNY Lt. Christopher Raguso, 39.
The other five victims were identified Saturday as Captain Andreas O’Keefe, 37, of Center Moriches, L.I.; Staff Sgt. Dashan Briggs, 30, of Port Jefferson Station, L.I.; Capt. Mark Weber, 29, of Colorado Springs, Colo.; Master Sgt. William Posch, 36, of Indialantic, Fla.; and Staff Sgt. Carl Enis, 31, of Tallahassee, Fla.
Briggs, a former football player at Riverhead High School, was married with two young children — ages 1 and 2.
“He was a real man,” the victim’s grandfather Eli Briggs told the Riverhead News-Review.
“I’m not saying that because he’s my grandson. He loved his family. He did everything he could to take care of them.”
The four New Yorkers were members of the New York Air National Guard 106th Rescue Wing based out of Westhampton Beach, L.I.
A litigation lawyer at the firm Debevoise & Plimpton, Zanetis had left for Iraq in the middle of January. He was on leave from his post as a city Fire Marshal.
The pair of smoke-eaters were part of “a very elite unit,” FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro said Saturday.
It was Zanetis’ third deployment. Raguso had served in Iraq once before.
“It’s unbelievable that people who sacrifice for a living volunteer to sacrifice for the military,” Nigro said.
“It’s incredible. It speaks to the kind of people we have in the New York City Fire Department.”
Raguso, a married father of two young girls, was a 13-year veteran of the department. Zanetis had 10 years on the job.
Zanetis joined the FDNY three years after he volunteered at Ground Zero in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
He left for Stanford in 2014 — and quickly distinguished himself as a scholar dedicated to public service.
Zanetis also won the National LGBT Bar Association’s Student Leadership Award in 2017.
“With hardwiring for public service, the sweet energy of a puppy, and a brilliant, curious mind, Tripp was making a life that would make a difference,” a former professor, Michelle Wilde Anderson, wrote in a moving tribute to Zanetis.
“He was building towards elected office, and he would have been a leader for our times.”
“Tripp Zanetis was gold,” Anderson added. “We are richer for his life, and we owe something back for it.”