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Loved ones celebrate broadcaster’s life

Airman 1st Class Lauren Marie Lagudi made everyone around her feel special.

She always had a smile and her laugh was infectious.

Her charisma made her a natural on camera, launching her into the broadcasting career she had aspired to since her teens.

Last November, she survived a 17-day coma caused by toxic shock syndrome and battled her way back to health and her first duty station at Aviano Air Base, Italy.

“Even at the young age of 20 she fulfilled her dreams,” said Donna Turner, a longtime family friend.

Turner and other friends and family gathered Oct. 29 at a San Antonio area funeral home to help Lagudi’s parents, Salvatore and Susan, celebrate the life of their only daughter.

Lagudi was found dead Oct. 20 near a platform at the train station in Pordenone, 10 miles from Aviano. Italian officials and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations are trying to determine the cause of her death.

Her sudden and mysterious death shocked those who loved her.

“Lauren is the most happy, joyous girl you would ever meet,” said Salvatore Lagudi, a retired chief master sergeant. “She was living her dream.”

In the days before she died, Lagudi went to Rome to visit friends and tour the Vatican, her father said.

“She was texting her friends from the train,” he said. “She had a great trip.”

Lagudi followed in the footsteps of her mother, who was also a broadcaster in the Air Force before settling down to have a family. Lagudi has two younger brothers, Salvatore Jr. and Robert.

“She was a natural,” Salvatore Lagudi said of his daughter’s on-air skills.

Lagudi joined the service in January 2008.

Morning radio show

She became a broadcaster for American Forces Network and had her own morning radio show, called “Your Morning Fix with Airman Lagudi,” said 1st Lt. Kim Schaerdel, a spokeswoman for the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano.

Her work won her the 2008 Outstanding New Broadcaster Award in the annual Air Force media contest.

Her love for her job led her family to establish the Lauren Lagudi Foundation, which will provide media equipment and scholarships to young journalists.

Lagudi was a huge Miami Dolphins football fan, and her family had wristbands with the foundation’s Web address made in the team’s colors, green and orange.

Upbeat and outgoing, Lagudi was devoted to her family, said Sherri Youngblood, another close family friend.

Salvatore Lagudi thinks the saying she had on her Twitter account, “I believe that if you’re not six feet under then you’re on top of the world, so you should live every day to the fullest and always stay positive!” epitomized his daughter.

“That’s what she lived every single day,” he said.

Salvatore Lagudi will hold on to every moment he shared with his daughter.

“We’re blessed to have all her news productions,” he said. “We’re blessed to have some of her radio recordings. Lauren had a tremendous amount of friends. She was sweet, and everyone got attached to Lauren. She was contagious with her enthusiasm and her smile and her silly laugh.”