Obituaries

Deceased Glen Ellyn-Native FBI Agent Remembered by Family

The Glenbard South graduate and hostage-rescue specialist who was killed in a training exercise in May grew up promising to "protect his country," his parents recall.

The Glen Ellyn parents of Christopher Lorek, the 41-year-old FBI agent and 1989 Glenbard South alum who was killed in May in a training accident in Virginia Beach, remembered their son as a “natural leader,” a young entrepreneur and Eagle Scout who pledged as a local fifth-grader to grow up to “protect my country,” the Daily Herald reports.

"He really belonged to his country," his mother, Janet Lorek told the paper, and his father Bill Lorek added that “he showed a great deal of responsibility from an early age, and you don't see that a lot in young people today.”

According to the paper, Lorek, who served on the FBI’s elite hostage-rescue team (the same team responsible for the well-publicized Alabama bunker child rescue,) was killed on May 20 along with a fellow agent when equipment malfunctioned during a fast-rope exercise from a helicopter.

Lorek didn’t visit Glen Ellyn often in recent years, the paper said, spending time with his wife young daughters in Virginia instead, but frequently called home.

“His children really needed him more, and he was very much aware he needed to be with them as much as possible,” Janet Lorek told the paper. "He lived a meaningful life and touched the lives of so many people... What more can you say about a person?”

A public memorial is planned at James the Apostle Church in Glen Ellyn at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 8.

Read the full story at the Daily Herald website.


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