TSA Agent, LAX Shooting Survivor, Competes on NBC’s The Voice
Vadim Liberman September 24, 2014
Agent Damian Lawson impressed judges by performing the same song he sang at the funeral of a fatally shot TSA agent.
Perhaps some people dream of becoming TSA agents, but not Damian Lawson. A TSA employee at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Lawson has other aspirations. The 35-year-old from Monroe, La., let the entire nation know his ambitions on Monday night during the season premiere of NBC reality singing competition The Voice (Editor’s Note: this link may not work outside the U.S.). But it wasn’t just Lawson’s singing that got attention. His backstory was equally riveting.
On November 1, 2013, while Lawson was working at a LAX checkpoint, gunman Paul Ciancia opened fire in a wild shooting spree. Ciancia’s spray of bullets injured several TSA agents and civilians. Lawson’s co-worker and friend, Gerardo Hernandez, was shot dead.
During his Voice audition, Lawson performed an emotional cover of Boys II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”, the same song that Lawson sang at Hernandez’s funeral. During the passionate rendition, all four judges swiveled in their seats to watch Lawson, who was moved to tears. “I’ve just been told ‘no’ so many times,” Lawson said after his performance. “It just feels good to see you guys turn around for me.”
Meanwhile, judge Blake Sheldon asked Lawson about a pocket knife he once surrendered at a Nashville airport. “Blake, he doesn’t know all the other TSAs,” fellow judge Adam Levine explained.
Lawson then picked Levine to mentor him through the competition.
[Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBC]
I initially read the headline to mean that a TSA agent had been a cast member for the season of the CBS program Survivor that just finished shooting, and that he was now a contestant on The Voice. Some people do make a second career out of being reality show contestants.