Dustin Lukasiewicz was born in Kearney, Nebraska in 1985. He attended Wilcox Public School (K-12) and was a part of the first class to graduate from consolidated Wilcox-Hildreth School in 2003. He was an avid sports fan and played football and basketball for the Falcons. He graduated from UNL with a bachelor's degree in political science in 2007 and was active in ROTC throughout his college career.
After college, Dustin attended Officer Candidate School and was commissioned in 2008. Dusty completed flight school near Pensacola, FL and earned his Wings in September of 2010. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton for the remainder of his military career, outside of deployments. In 2012 he was deployed to Afghanistan and then to Japan in 2014. During his service in the Marine Corps, Dustin received the Afghanistan Campaign Bronze Star, Strike/Flight #5 Medal, and the Joint Service Commendation Medal.
In May of 2015, just days before his deployment ended, he and his squadron were sent to Nepal to provide aid after a massive series of devastating earthquakes. While Dusty and his crew were evacuating the wounded to a safer place, they experienced a momentous change in the weather that caused the helicopter to crash. Although Dustin did not survive the crash, he and the crew of his chopper saved three people the day of the accident and many more were affected by the supplies delivered by their unit in the previous days.
Dusty had a lifelong passion for flying. In his youth, he collected airplanes and helicopters and even chose to wear clothing with jets or helicopters on them. He loved going to air shows and air and space museums. His love of flying never diminished, it gave him immense joy.
Because Dusty was tall, lanky, and animated, his flight crew wanted to give him the call sign “STICK BUG,” but the commanding officer had other ideas. Instead, his call name became “LUKA-SANDWICH.”
Dustin met his wife Ashley while attending flight school in Pensacola and the two were married shortly after moving to San Diego in 2011. In 2013, Dustin’s passion for life expanded as he and Ashley welcomed their daughter Isabelle into the world. Izzy was the light of Dusty’s life. He loved taking her for walks to the park, and he became a little boy again when the two of them would play with her farm toys. Their son Dustin was born just four days after his father was laid to rest and could be his dad’s twin.
A true farm boy, Dusty loved to garden. He grew a nice garden while stationed in California and traded produce with neighbors. During Dusty and Ashley’s last trip to Nebraska, the couple purchased a farm acreage north of St Paul with intentions to build a house there and raise his kids in Nebraska so they would experience "the good life," just as he had.
