As a toddler still in the era of light-up sneakers and sippy cups, West Fargo’s Drake Aasen was already staring wide-eyed at a galaxy far, far away.

“I was probably about 3 years old,” he recalls of watching "Star Wars" for the first time with his dad, Mike Aasen.

What he didn’t know then was that the world he loved on screen would circle back into his life in a spectacular way.

Now a senior at Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Aasen was recently selected to present the festival’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award to Mark Hamill,

the man whose turn as Luke Skywalker nudged Drake toward a life onstage.

It was a full-circle moment years in the making for the 2022 West Fargo High School graduate. Aasen visited with The Forum recently to discuss meeting Hamill and

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