Michael Weston, who studied computer science and economics at Stanford and then earned a law degree at Harvard, could have thrived on Wall Street, on Capitol Hill or in Silicon Valley. But Weston turned away from the money and prestige of those fields for a career in public service, first in the military and then the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Weston, '94, a DEA special agent and Marine Corps major, died on October 26, when the U.S. military helicopter he was in crashed while returning from a counter-narcotics mission in western Afghanistan. Two other DEA agents and seven soldiers also were killed. Weston was 37.
"Mike could have been anything he wanted," wrote Josh Rushing, who attended officer candidate school with Weston, in a blog entry. "[At Harvard], he was offended by his classmates' sense of entitlement to the six-figure careers and power that would come with their high-profile postings in the nation's elite law firms after graduation. Instead, Mike craved the feeling of making a difference."
Weston, who grew up in California and Pennsylvania, entered Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 1999 and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He worked several years in military law at Camp Pendleton in Southern California and was deployed in January 2003 to Kuwait and Iraq. That August, he left active duty but continued his military service in the Marine Corps Reserves.
In 2005, on a second combat tour in Iraq, Weston served as part of a team assigned to protect the critical October elections. In 2006, after only nine months back in the States, Weston volunteered for his third combat tour to Iraq.
Weston joined the DEA in September 2003. Assigned to an office in Richmond, Va., he worked on a number of significant cases. Last July, Weston volunteered for a two-year deployment to Afghanistan as a member of the DEA's Kabul Country Office.
Weston is survived by his wife of five months, Cynthia Tidler; his mother, Judy, and her husband, Steven Zarit; his father, Steven, and his wife, Jude Weston; three brothers, Thomas Weston, Benjamin Zarit and Matthew Zarit; a sister, Megan Manly; and grandparents, Avis and Laurence Maes.
