When Senior Airman Mike Malarsie deployed to Afghanistan in December 2009, he was eager to fulfill one of his childhood dreams of being a member of one of the military’s elite special forces units.

“I always wanted to do something exciting, out there running around on the ground, being adventurous,” said Malarsie, who was deployed as a tactical air control party specialist.

What happened in the next few months cut that dream short, cost him his eyesight and nearly his life. On Jan. 3, 2010, Malarsie and his teammate, Senior Airman Brad Smith, were on a foot patrol with 11 Soldiers in a small village near Kandahar.

“We were going to a town against the base of a mountain, and it had a canal that ran in front of it with just one bridge that led into the town,” Malarsie said. “As we approached (the village), there was no one there, so we were a little suspicious.”

Malarsie said he and his squad waited for half an hour to see if they could observe any suspicious activity, but nothing happened.

“So the patrol leader said, ‘Okay, we’re going to send one squad across this bridge.’ We started across this bridge, and I was the third one in line,” he explained. “I remember looking over my left shoulder up the valley, and as I turned back, the person in the front of our squad stepped on an (improvised explosive device) buried in the road. It killed him, threw him forward and killed the guy behind him.”

Malarsie took the blast to his face and neck. It was so powerful, it knocked him off the bridge, and he landed face down in the canal water below.

“I was still completely disorientated. I couldn’t figure it out,” Malarsie said. “I’m not sure how long I was actually in the water, but after a certain length of time of having no success (to get out of the water), this realization hit me that I was probably going to drown. This was it.”

But then Malarsie felt someone pull him from the water. It was his squad’s medic, who dragged him to a nearby bank and began performing first aid. Malarsie suffered a shattered jaw, broken nose, fractured skull, perforated ear drum, moderate brain damage and shrapnel damage to his eyes, face and neck.

“I was in and out of consciousness the whole time, but I remember talking to him, and I could start to hear small-arms fire,” Malarsie said. “I tried to find my weapon. I asked him where it was, and he said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to need it.’ I found out later that it was completely ripped off and blown away in the blast.”

As Malarsie lay on the bank, he said he felt a second concussion that rained debris and rubble onto his face. Another IED had detonated, killing Smith and another Soldier who were attempting to retrieve the body of one of the Soldiers who died in the first blast.

“I blacked out after that, and the last thing I remember is when they were strapping me on the (UH-60) Blackhawk,” he said. “I woke up about a week or so later in Walter Reed.”

When Malarsie was finally aware of his surroundings, his doctor had somber news for him. He was unable to repair Malarsie’s damaged eyes, leaving him completely blind. Malarsie sat back in the wheelchair trying to come to grips with what he had been told. He thought of other blind people he knew who seemed happy and have accomplished amazing things despite their disability. Because his broken jaw was wired shut, Malarsie then grabbed a pen and piece of paper and wrote a note to his doctor. It simply stated, “Thank you.”

While he recognizes that this tragedy could leave others with regret for having joined the military and becoming disabled, Malarsie cherishes the new opportunities that have opened up to him through his injuries and has found that his story has a profound impact on his fellow service members and civilians.

“I had the opportunity to go around and do some speaking, and the response I got from people after I shared my story was amazing and inspirational to me,” he said. “It surprised me the impact sharing my story could have on other people. I really started to realize the fourth or fifth time I (spoke) that it was turning into something really good.”

Today, Malarsie is the administrator of the Air Force Mentorship Program. He’s responsible for finding wounded, ill and injured Airmen who have been through recovery and rehabilitation and teach them mentoring tools so they can help other Airmen who have experienced similar situations.

Most importantly, though, the tragedy afforded Malarsie the opportunity to meet his future wife.

Malarsie remembers talking with his mom about meeting girls while undergoing rehabilitation at the Polytrauma-Blind Rehabilitation Center in Palo Alto, Calif. “I said, ‘All through my life I’ve been the one chasing girls. What do you think the odds are that some girl is going to come ask me out?’”

His mother was honest and told him his odds weren’t very good.

A week later, in March 2010, Smith’s widow, Tiffany, visited him with several other widows who had lost their husbands in the same attack.

Among them was Jesse Lengstorf, the widow of Army Sgt. Joshua Lengstorf, the Soldier in Malarsie’s patrol who stepped on the roadside bomb.

“Up until this point, I didn’t know she existed,” Malarsie said. “We just hit it off, and it was like we had known each other for years already. They stayed for 12 days, and when the time came for them to leave, she asked if she could visit again. I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

The next time Jesse visited, she asked Malarsie out on their first official date.

“I turned to my mom and kinda laughed and said, ‘I told you it wouldn’t take very long,’” Malarsie said.

The couple quickly fell in love and married June 25, 2010.

“Going through a near-death experience really changed my outlook on a lot of things, and one of the decisions I made was to do all the things I always wanted to. Every dream I ever had, I wanted to make it happen,” Malarsie said. “That included getting married. I didn’t plan on it so quickly, but when I met her, it seemed so right.”

Shortly after the couple married, they found out they were expecting, Jesse said. While the birth of their daughter was a joyous occasion, it also brought on the hardest moment she has endured since marrying Malarsie.

“We were in the hospital, and I just had her, and he asked what she looked like,” Jesse said. “I struggled with what to tell him because he didn’t even know what I looked like. I wondered how to explain his daughter to him.”

Since then, Malarsie and Jesse have settled into a routine. She wakes up with him every day to ensure he’s properly dressed in his military uniform.

“This has been so frustrating, because I’ve never helped with a dress uniform before, and all of a sudden, Michael is wearing his all the time. This has to be half an inch from this or this has to be aligned with this pocket,” she explained with her hands. “He keeps getting new things added, so we have to keep pushing things around, and it’s a whole new world. I’m not just a military wife, sometimes I feel like the military wife.”

Even though her life isn’t easy being a care giver, a spouse of a wounded warrior and widow to a fallen Soldier, Jesse’s become a person that many others look up to because of the adversity she’s overcome. She has recently been asked to share her story and begin speaking about the importance of care givers.

“I never would have picked myself to be in a position to speak to or help others, but I want to get out there and help. I know what it was like to feel alone and you’re thinking, ‘Am I the only one who’s going through this?’ But of course, you’re not,” she explained. “I want to let those people know that there are a lot of others going through the same situation. You just have to keep going, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel, no matter what injury, illness or disease (their spouse) may be going through.”

Despite overcoming these daily challenges, the couple still has hurdles in the future. Malarsie will face a medical board in the coming months that will decide whether or not he will be able to stay in the military. As they’ve always done, the couple is determined to keep fighting.

“One of my biggest goals is to stay in and stay on active duty,” Malarsie said. “I don’t want to take the uniform off.”