Friends and family of Army Spc. Lori Piestewa gathered early Monday morning in Phoenix for a sunrise service to honor the 23-year-old mother of two who died early in the Iraq war, the first Native American wearing a U.S. military uniform to die in combat, the Arizona Republic reported.

While the service was to honor Piestewa, a Hispanic-Hopi woman from Tuba City, Ariz., her parents insisted that Piestewa Peak, the Phoenix mountain named for their daughter, was really "all of our people's mountain," the Republic reported.

Other speakers at the service praised not only the sacrifice of Lori Piestewa, who served with the 507th Maintenance Company out of Fort Bliss, Texas, and was killed in a March 23, 2003, ambush, but others who gave their lives or were injured while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the paper said.

Also attending the service were former members of Piestewa's unit -- Jessica Lynch, Shoshana Johnson, Joseph Hudson and Patrick Miller -- who were taken prisoner during the ambush and were later rescued by other U.S. troops.

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