Dimitri (Dima) Linney was born on Christmas Day, 1990, in Feodosiya, Ukraine, a small city in the Crimea on the Black Sea.  His birthmother was unable to take care of him and his sister Olga, and their early years were marked by neglect and abuse. In 1994 Dimitri (age 3½) and Olga (age 9) were adopted from an orphanage in Ukraine by Thomas Linney and Marilyn Baker of Alexandria, VA. They traveled with a stranger across the ocean to a new land, with a new family and home, and a completely new language. Yet children are resilient.  With the help of Muzzy (BBC English language videos for kids), cartoons, and summer camp, they learned English quickly and taught each other how to survive. Even as they grew and pursued their separate activities, the bond between them, forged in those early years of adversity, was—and is—inviolate.

The school years were filled for Dimitri with activities such as soccer, Little League, Tae Kwan Do, and skateboarding. In addition to the two family dogs, he always had pets of his own: mice, a bird, Elmo the guinea pig, Leo the lizard, Lisa the snake, and (later) Farnsworth the cat. He loved family vacations to the Florida Everglades, Lake Placid, and Vermont, as well as roughhousing with his cousins in San Francisco, peering down the Columbia Glacier crevasses in Alberta, being chased by a buffalo in Yellowstone Park, rolling down a snow-covered hillside in Big Sky, Montana, exploring the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, and climbing atop the railing to get a better view of the Grand Canyon. He was, needless to say, a busy guy.

At age 7 Dimitri was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, which made academic work challenging. He attended private schools from kindergarten through high school, where he benefitted from smaller classes, flexible lessons, and tutoring. He was always an active and visual child, eager to learn by seeing and doing, and not well suited to education based on words and linear learning. He did, interestingly, become an active reader as an adult—thanks in large part to the Internet.

As a teenager, Dimitri developed his talent for art, cooking, and music (guitar and drums). He took up paintball with zest and won several tournaments with his teammates. Unfortunately, he also tore the meniscus in his knee that required surgery and never fully healed. He was sociable and friendly, and made close friends whom he kept in touch with most of his life. Always curious about how things worked, he thought nothing of dismantling machinery and gadgets to see their insides. Sometimes he even put them back together.

With excellent visual skills and a remarkable memory for detail, Dimitri was creative and resourceful. He was funny enough for a career as a stand-up comic and a good enough cook to consider culinary school. He loved sports cars, particularly classic Mustangs, and his knowledge of all things with motors meant he could diagnose and fix just about anything.

He was also a master of video games, known for playing through Triple A Games such Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption and Cyber Punk on the hardest level and beating them several times over just to see all the different possible endings. Besides combat, his favorite part was learning about the lore of the worlds he was playing in. He had an intuitive understanding of storytelling and character development and judged games as much by their artistic design and realism as their action.

Dimitri graduated in 2009 from Alexandria Friends School, a private alternative school based on Quaker principles, then worked for several years in construction. In 2011 he enrolled in the Advanced Technology Institute in Virginia Beach, where he earned a certificate in auto mechanics and another in welding. He worked several years in machining and welding jobs in the Norfolk area, frequently in Navy shipyards.

In 2017, at age 26, he suffered a catastrophic industrial accident, in which a truck battery on a shelf above him tipped and spilled battery acid over him, severely burning his two forearms. He tried to return to work, but it was impossible, and in 2018 he moved back to Northern Virginia to live with his mother in Arlington.  The next few years were spent in medical treatments and part-time jobs, but the permanent damage to his arms made his wished-for career in welding impossible.

Through all of these trials and adventures, Dimitri kept in close touch with his beloved sister Olga and, in more recent years, her husband Erik. In 2023, his father Thomas died. Overcoming his own anxiety and grief, he spoke eloquently at his father’s memorial service, standing at the same podium where, it turns out, his own life would later be celebrated.

Dimitri struggled with painkillers and other drugs off and on for a number of years and served two years in jail in 2023-2025.  There he read extensively, listened to music, and greatly expanded his talents in drawing and cooking (including birthday cakes for other inmates made from commissary snacks). Released from jail in August 2025, he was determined to make a new life for himself and set about quickly to find an apartment and car and start to job hunt. His self-confidence, sense of purpose, and optimism about the future were contagious, and some of the stories he told about jail—especially his cooking adventures--were hilarious.

Dimitri died suddenly and unexpectedly on October 18, 2025, at age 34. His life was hard in many ways, but also interspersed with enormous creativity, laughter, and love. He is survived by his mother, Marilyn Baker, his sister Olga Linney and her husband Erik Stillings, and many loving Baker and Linney aunts, uncles, and cousins.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Lab Rescue, where Dimitri found his best-ever canine friend Angus:

Lab Rescue LRCP

P.O. Box 1814

Annandale, VA 22003

https://www.lab-rescue.org/   

Tax ID: 52-1880024