Oceanside Woman ‘Never Frightened’ : Slain American Planned Trip Despite Danger

The American woman killed by terrorists who hijacked an EgyptAir flight out of Athens decided take her Thanksgiving vacation in Cairo in the belief that security at the airport had been improved after an earlier hijacking, relatives said Monday.

In a brief interview, relatives 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 style.

“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 the EgyptAir jetliner in Malta, apparently the first victim of the band of Arab terrorists who seized the Cairo-bound Boeing 737 airliner minutes after it left the ground in Greece.

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

“We had pretty much figured it out,” Doris said. “There were three Americans on board. One was (reported) 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.”

‘It’s Just Unreal’

Still, the news brought shock: “It’s just unreal,” Doris said. “Look at the odds. Three Americans on a hijacked airplane and one of them just happens to be my sister. And she just happens to be the one who dies.”

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. Relatives 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 also said they knew little about her vacation plans for Cairo.

Rogenkamp is the eldest of five children of a retired Army colonel, Vernon Peterson, who now works for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington. Her mother, Hetty Peterson, has lived in Oceanside for about seven years, neighbors said. Doris also lives in Oceanside with her husband.

Rogenkamp had discussed with her mother the June hijacking of a TWA airliner out of Athens--an episode that kept 39 Americans hostage in Beirut for 16 days--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, adding that her mother had traveled abroad with Rogenkamp last summer. “She was very independent and said she wouldn’t let it interfere with her plans.”

Since the Saturday hijacking, Greek officials have strongly defended security measures at the Athens airport, and the International Air Transport Assn. suggested Monday that the hijackers of the EgyptAir flight may have smuggled their weapons aboard in Cairo--where the flight originated--rather than in Athens.

Although she enjoyed living overseas, Rogenkamp had become discouraged in recent months by the mounting anti-American sentiment in Greece, her sister said. She had requested a transfer to an Air Force facility in Belgium and had planned to relocate in the spring.

“She was really looking forward to moving,” Doris said. “If only that transfer had come sooner.”

Doris said the family expects that Rogenkamp’s body will arrive in San Diego on Friday. Her father and other relatives were heading to Oceanside for the funeral service, which has yet to be scheduled.

In addition to her mother, father and sister Katharine, Rogenkamp, who was divorced but retained her married name, is survived by two sisters, Patricia Henry, 36, and Michelle Peterson, 21, and a brother, Paul, 27.