Slain aid worker sought God’s attention

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (BP)–Yvonne Lawson’s fingertips caressed the crate containing the coffin of her daughter, Karen Watson, oblivious to the crowd collected about her, family and friends who met the plane bearing the body at Kern County’s Meadows Field.

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“I knew it was Karen the minute I touched that box,” Lawson said. “I know it sounds strange, but I could feel her. Her death wasn’t real to me until then.”

It has been just over a year since mother and daughter said goodbye, a goodbye that would lead Watson, 38, to a heartbreaking death on the other side of the world.

Lawson saw that goodbye coming years before, long before her daughter would, or could, voice it. It was a small thing, something a mother would notice, a look in Watson’s eyes that said something deep was happening within this daughter.

She first noticed it when Watson returned from a mission trip to El Salvador with her church, Valley Baptist in Bakersfield, Calif. She was spilling over with stories and bubbling with excitement – and worried about the fate of children she had come to love.

Lawson listened, saw the look and knew someday her daughter would trade the life she had crafted in California’s Central Valley to help people in other parts of the world.

In 2003, Watson joined the Southern Baptist International Mission Board as a humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq. Friends say it was the job she was created for. As the United States and Iraq edged into war, she worked in refugee camps in Jordan and Kuwait, living out of a suitcase, never having a permanent home. When the war wound down, she moved into Iraq, coordinating efforts to distribute 3 million pounds of food, set up water purification systems and help the Iraqi people rebuild their lives.

On March 15, 2004, while investigating sites for future humanitarian relief efforts with four other aid workers, she and three of her colleagues died from a rocket-propelled grenade and gunfire attack while driving through the city of Mosul.

“I heard her breathing, then I felt her die,” said Carrie McDonnall of Rowlett, Texas, the lone survivor of the attack that also killed McDonnall’s husband, David, and Larry and Jean Elliott of Cary, N.C,

More than a week after her death, family and friends gathered at Bakersfield’s Valley Baptist Church for her funeral. More than a thousand people filled the sanctuary. They came to grieve and remember, honor and celebrate a life well lived.

Among them were six rows of deputies from the Kern County Sheriff’s Department. They tookturns, two by two, standing guard by her casket throughout the service. Watson served among them for eight years. The training she received qualified her for the work she did in Iraq.

“Don’t make Karen into a saint,” said one of her friends from those days. “She would hate that. She was pretty wild when she was young. But when she became a Christian, she turned around 180 degrees.”

“She had one speed, and that was 100 miles per hour,” said Lt. Kevin Wright of the Sheriff’s Department and a close friend. “When you were with Karen, you either got on board the train or you were left behind. If she believed passionately about something, she’d let you know about it.

“I’ve heard that more than a few times myself,” whispered a co-worker who attended from Iraq.

IMB President Jerry Rankin talked about Watson’s penchant for shopping. Invariably, it was for someone else, seldom for herself. She would see something someone needed -- or knew they would like -- and buy it. But she recently bought a small, jeweled ring for herself.

“Colleagues teased her that it was a wedding ring and she wasn’t married,” Rankin said. “‘Well, maybe I can wear it because of my love for Jesus Christ,’ she said.”