For three weeks, Scott Sadler’s life was on hold. On Aug. 10, the Mathews native and current Arlington resident got a telephone call from an old friend who urgently needed help, and he stopped everything to render aid.

He didn’t go out to dinner or to shop or to visit friends. For the first time ever he missed a wedding he had said he would attend, and he in fact didn’t leave home at all except for work. Even his job took a back seat to the task he had set for himself—getting his friend Afzal Afzali out of Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Aug. 26 (Friday, Aug. 27 Kabul time), after days of enduring the push of crowds around Hamid Karzai International Airport and trying to stay under the Taliban radar, Afzali and his family were among the last refugees to escape Afghanistan before the Taliban took over.

Sadler met Afzali in 2012 while serving in Afghanistan as the senior communications and policy advisor to Gen. John Allen, commander at the International Security Assistance Force in ...