‘Her spirit will live on’:
Family honors Kayla Mueller
Against the backdrop of painful memories brought to light in a new interview, Kayla Mueller’s family gathered Saturday at a playground built to honor the 26-year-old who lost her life after being kidnapped in Syria by ISIS.
PRESCOTT - There were balloons, music and little kids running from the orange slide to get in line for the zip line, but the backdrop was something more sad and more painful from three years earlier.
Carl and Marsha Mueller, along with invited guests including U.S. Sen. John McCain, gathered at a playground built to honor their daughter, Kayla Mueller. Half a world away, in Syria, Kayla Mueller had been kidnapped by Islamic extremists in 2013 and held captive for 18 months before she was confirmed dead a year and a half ago, at age 26.
Saturday was the ceremonial opening, a small moment at a small piece of earth dedicated as “Kayla’s Hands,” the phrase her parents use to describe the young woman’s ceaseless pursuit of humanitarian work.
Friday night had cast a shadow on the festivities of Saturday, a vivid reminder of why there’s this playground at all.
In a TV special that night, Carl and Marsha Mueller discussed haunting details about their daughter’s time in captivity and, in an interview that was at times tearful and angry, leveled some new accusations about who was to blame for not bringing her home alive.
ABC News released pieces of its broadcast online in the days leading up to the Friday evening airing, hurling accusations on Wednesday that humanitarian aid groups had abandoned Kayla Mueller and on Thursday releasing a haunting 10-second clip of a video of her — one the Muellers said was made by ISIS and sent to them early in her captivity, to prove she was still alive.
In the video, Kayla Mueller, her hair covered, her brow furrowed, looks pale and drawn, particularly in comparison to the smiling young woman, her dark hair flying, in the picture on the banner that hung on the new playground fence Saturday.
“Kayla finally got to speak, and people are listening,” Carl Mueller said of their TV special, after Saturday’s playground event.
For her parents, there was a sense of relief in telling secrets they have kept since her capture.
“Tell the truth as you know it,” Marsha Mueller said. “The truth really does set you free.”
In the year and a half since their daughter’s death was confirmed, the Muellers have grown increasingly frustrated by — and increasingly vocal about — what they see as a lack of progress on improving the government’s handling of foreign hostage cases. In addition, there has been no new information for more than a year from an ongoing investigation of what happened to their daughter.
On Saturday, however, their focus was on the playground.
It had been pouring rain but cleared up just in time for the Muellers to cut a red ribbon with oversize scissors to officially open the park.
“Her spirit will live on in the laughter and the joy and the compassion and the friendship in this playground,” said the Rev. Kathleen Day, Kayla Mueller’s mentor and friend from Northern Arizona University.
A Girl Scout Daisy troop from Abia Judd Elementary School sang “Do you want to build a playground?” to the tune of Frozen’s “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” The troop donated $600 to the project, half of the proceeds from their cookie sales.
Kayla Mueller would have loved this playground, said McCain, the first to speak. Kids on the four-seat teeter totter squealed.
“Because Kayla Mueller was the kind of person who found her happiness in the happiness of others,” McCain said.
The senator had worked behind the scenes with his contacts in Qatar, Iraqi Kurdistan and Saudi Arabia, he has said, in an unsuccessful effort to secure Kayla’s release.
It was an emotional day for her family, friends and even the people who never knew Kayla but worked for 13 months to build the playground. Carl and Marsha Mueller helped plan the facility near their home in Pioneer Park. The Kiwanis Club of Prescott led the effort to raise $240,000 to build it.
Linda Ballard, secretary of the Prescott Kiwanis Club, handed out small packets of tissues.
The Muellers thanked everyone who contributed to the playground, including APS and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The couple said they come to the playground often.
“We can feel Kayla here,” Carl Mueller said. He turned to his wife, who shied away from the podium.
“I’ll just cry,” Marsha Mueller said. Then she leaned in to the microphone and said, “God bless you all.”
Much of the ABC News broadcast served as an exploration of what happened to Kayla Mueller in captivity, where efforts to rescue her broke down, and who may have been at fault for not doing more.
The “proof of life” video had been sent by Mueller’s hostage takers by email.
It is the only known image of her in captivity and was kept private by the Muellers until this week.
In the report, the Muellers blamed humanitarian aids groups in the area — and one in particular — for not doing more to help their daughter.
Kayla Mueller, at just 25, made her way to Turkey in late 2012 and went to work for Support to Life, an Istanbul-based non-governmental organization that works with Syrian refugees.
On Aug. 3, 2013, Mueller crossed the border to a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo with Omar Alkhani, a photojournalist and activist who has said he was her boyfriend and who had been sent as a subcontractor to repair the medical facility’s internet service.
Doctors Without Borders officials told The Republic in 2015 that they were not expecting the American and would have discouraged her from visiting. They kept the two at the facility overnight out of safety concerns.
The morning after Mueller and Alkhani arrived, someone at the hospital arranged for Kayla Mueller and Alkhani them to be taken to a bus station.
On the way to the station, armed gunmen took the three and the driver hostage. The driver was released hours later.
The Muellers told ABC News that the prestigious humanitarian group refused to help negotiate for their daughter’s freedom as it did for some of its own employees from another hospital who were later taken hostage and held along with Kayla Mueller.
During the time Kayla Mueller was held captive, the U.S. government had opportunities to negotiate for her return and pay a ransom but refused, the Muellers have said.
At the time, the longstanding U.S. policy was to not pay ransoms for hostages. The Muellers were told they could face prosecution if they paid the ransom themselves.
Then, with no warning, ISIS announced on social media on Feb. 6, 2015, that Kayla Mueller was dead, purportedly crushed by rubble of a building targeted in a bombing.
The struggles since
Last year, President Barack Obama opened the door for families to pay ransoms to foreign captors, though the government would continue to follow an official ban on concessions to terrorists. He also created a central office for hostage recovery.
But on the playground after the formal speeches, McCain said there is an obvious double standard, citing the negotiations that freed several American hostages from Iran as that country and other nations struck a landmark nuclear agreement.
“This is a day for celebrating the life of a beautiful young woman who epitomized everything that is the best of our citizens,” he said. “But at the same time it is very obvious that the Americans who were being held by the Iranians were ransomed, which means that this president has a double standard, and to me, that is disgraceful.
“The president, whether he meant to or not, placed a higher value on those four individual lives than Kayla Mueller’s,” he said.
A place to remember
The playground is a work in progress. There are plans for an archway at the entrance, a plaque that will tell about Mueller and a 4-foot tall sculpture of an owl, Kayla’s favorite.
Five-year-old Matthew Kellerman said he likes the zip line the best because it’s so fast that it’s a little bit scary. “It’s so fun!” he said.
His grandmother, Karen Applegate, a sheriff’s dispatcher, said she’ll bring her grandchildren often even though it is a 25-minute drive from her house.
“We wanted to honor Kayla today,” she said, even though they had never met. “We’ll come here in remembrance of her.”
“For me, it’s like closing a really big book,” Carl Mueller said. “Now I can come here and sit back and relax and enjoy it.”
If the wind blows just right through the power lines stretching overhead, Marsha Mueller said, it almost sounds like music. She can hear Kayla in it.