U.S. Victim Believed It Was Safe to Fly From Athens

The American woman killed by terrorists who hijacked an EgyptAir flight out of Athens decided to go ahead with Thanksgiving vacation plans to Cairo in the belief that security at the Athens Airport had been improved in the aftermath of an earlier hijacking, relatives said today.

In a brief interview, family members of Scarlett Marie Rogenkamp, 38, a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force in Athens, described her as very aware of the dangers of terrorism, but determined not to let it alter her life.

“She was never frightened and she was determined never to let it (the threat of terrorism) affect her work or her travel,” said Rogenkamp’s sister, Katharine Doris, 33.

Rogenkamp was shot to death and thrown from an EgyptAir jetliner in Malta, apparently the first victim of the band of Arab terrorists that seized the Cairo-bound Boeing 737 airliner minutes after it left the ground in Greece.

Just before 4 a.m. today, Rogenkamp’s mother and sister in Oceanside received confirmation of her death from State Department officials in Washington. It came as little surprise.

‘Figured It Out’

“We had pretty much figured it out,” Doris said. “There were three Americans on board. One was dead, one of them was a man and the other was a woman who lived in Egypt and had been injured. So we sort of deduced what had happened to Scarlett.”

For the last several years, Rogenkamp had worked as an industrial properties management specialist at the Air Force Contract Management Center detachment at the Tanagra Air Base near Athens. Family members would provide few details about the nature of her work, but noted that it did require her to travel frequently to the Middle East. They said they knew little about her vacation plans for Cairo.

Rogenkamp was the eldest of five children of a retired Army colonel, Vern Peterson, who now works for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington. Her mother, Hetty Peterson, lives in Oceanside.

Rogenkamp had discussed with her mother the June hijacking of a TWA airliner out of Athens but seemed confident that security had been improved, her sister said.

“She thought that what had happened was in the past and that security was strict now,” Doris said.