Oceanside Woman ‘Was Never Frightened’ : Slain American Decided on Trip Despite Danger

The American woman killed by terrorists on the hijacked EgyptAir flight had decided to go ahead with her Thanksgiving vacation trip to Cairo in the belief that security at Athens airport had been improved after the earlier infamous hijacking there, relatives said Monday.

In a brief interview, family members of Scarlett M. 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 the EgyptAir jet in Malta, the victim of the band of Arab terrorists who seized the Cairo-bound Boeing 737 minutes after it left Athens.

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.”

‘Look at the Odds’

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. Family members provided few details about the nature of her work, but noted that the job required her to travel frequently to the Middle East. They said they knew little about her Cairo vacation plans.

Rogenkamp was the oldest 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 a prosperous area of 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 left an American dead and kept 39 other Americans hostage in Beirut for 16 days--but she seemed confident that security had been improved, her sister said.

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

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