Man Received Text from D.C. Plane Crash Victim 30 Minutes Before Family Boarded Doomed Flight (Exclusive)

• Peter Livingston, his wife Donna and their daughters Everly and Alydia were among the 67 victims who died in the Jan. 29 collision between an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army helicopter
• The Livingston family was heading home to Virginia after Everly and Alydia had attended an ice skating camp for young Olympic hopefuls
• “He really [molded] his life to enable Alydia and Everly’s skating,” friend Ali Jian tells PEOPLE

A friend of Peter Livingston, who died in the D.C. plane crash along with his wife Donna and their daughters Everly and Alydia, says he got a text from him just 30 minutes before the family boarded the doomed flight.

“We always talked a little politics, a little sports,” Ali Jian, 46, of Leesburg, Virginia, tells PEOPLE — but that wasn’t what the message was about. Instead, it had to do with a local matter involving a plan to put up new power lines in their community.

“He sent me some sort about update about it…He was really involved with the school board here and the local county stuff,” adds Jian. “He knew I was interested in these power lines not getting too close to my kids’ school.”

Later that evening, Jian heard about a small plane crash over the Potomac in the news, but didn’t think much about it — and when a mutual friend contacted him later that night, Jian didn’t immediately make the connection.

“He called broken up, and he found out that Peter was on the flight,” Jian remembers of the friend’s phone call. “I said, ‘Well, hold out hope.’ And obviously we know what happened out of there.”

On the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 29, an American Airlines regional plane carrying 64 people collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter near Reagan National Airport. There have been no survivors.

The Livingston family was on the plane because they were heading home to Ashburn after Everly and Alydia had attended an ice skating camp in Wichita, Kansas, for young Olympic hopefuls.

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Jian says that both Peter, a Virginia-based realtor and avid hockey player, and his wife Donna were really involved in guiding his children’s figure-skating ambitions. 

And while Peter may have “started teaching them to skate in order to get them into hockey,” once they got into figure skating, did everything he could “so that they could accomplish their dreams.”

“He really [molded] his life to enable Alydia and Everly’s skating,” adds Jian. “He and his wife would homeschool them. He would personally take them to the rink like every day..,If he wasn’t coaching them, he was watching them being coached.”

Peter even built an outdoor skating rink in their backyard. “Backyard rinks were his passion,” says Jian.

Jian also remembered his friend as a “funny guy” who was never afraid to show off his sense of humor.

Sharing one example, Jian recalled how after being tasked with boosting his job’s social media presence, Peter started an Instagram but instead of offering a straightforward appraisal of all their properties, he instead focused on the “unusual” qualities of each home, like having “chandeliers in the bathroom.”

Following news of the tragedy, on Sunday, Feb. 2, Jian says he refereed a late-night hockey game in Ashburn in memory of Peter and his family. 

“He was a free spirit,” Jian adds of his late friend. “He just did what he needed to do to enable [their lives] because it was more important for him to be around his daughters.”