ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Family, friends, and the community are remembering the three men who lost their lives when a military helicopter crashed Wednesday night in Mendon.
Spectrum News spoke with the family of Chief Warrant Officer Christian Koch, who says he will be dearly missed.
Koch is among the three souls who perished when a military helicopter crashed and burned in a field in Mendon Wednesday night.
This coming Monday, the 20-year veteran of the National Guard would have celebrated his 40th birthday.
Koch lived in Honeoye Falls and leaves behind a wife and four young children, ages three to nine.
There is GoFundMe set up to help support them.
His family is not prepared to talk on camera. But Spectrum News spoke with Koch's sister-in-law.
"The world just needs to understand what a loving, kind, forgiving, patriotic man he was. His life was his country and his children and his wife. There wasn't a spare moment in his life when he wasn't thinking of one or the other,” said Aimee Koch.
Spectrum News met Koch when he was recently honored by the Red Cross of Western New York for helping to rescue an 11-year-old boy who fell into a gorge.
He talked with Spectrum News about that in October of 2020.
"Everybody worked together very well that day... So we knew we were going into a hole, we knew we were going to have to drop a medic. It's hard to anticipate just how deep it is down there, like I said, we didn't know how deep it was,” Christian said at the time.
The highly decorated Koch served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He later helped with a security mission in the United States after the September 11 attacks. He became a helicopter pilot in 2006 and was also a senior instructor at the unit at the aviation support facility in Rochester.
Aimee Koch says he saved more than 80 lives during a flooding operation in Virginia.
"There are many, many people walking this earth right now that owe their lives to Christian, including the people from the night of the crash. When the helicopter went down, it was in a residential area. He used every available skill that he had to him to avoid hitting people's homes and hurting them and hurting their families,” Aimee said.
Comrades saluted as Koch's body and the bodies of the others were escorted in a procession to the Monroe County Medical Examiner's Office on Thursday.
Flags throughout the area are at half-staff, including at SUNY Brockport, where Koch attended. He graduated in 2010.
"There's just no comprehending the grief that this has brought this family. But we are a big loving family and we are going to continue to support and love each other and keep his memory alive," said Aimee Koch.