Thursday, Aug. 4, 2005 | 10:57 a.m.
Friends and family of Kristina Miller, the only American killed in last month's Egyptian resort terrorist bombings, remembered her Wednesday as an all-American girl who was driven to make all her dreams come true until explosions ended her life.
Miller, 27 and a native of Las Vegas, had been visiting the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik with her British boyfriend, 30-year-old Keri Davies, who was also killed on her birthday in Egypt's deadliest terror attack.
Miller had visited her father, 49-year-old Tony Miller, for seven months at his London sports betting office, before she left for the Egyptian resort on the Red Sea.
Tony Miller described how his daughter was scared for a month after arriving in a foreign city, even though Britain was her favorite country.
Kristi met Davies at her father's office. Kristi asked Davies out because he was shy and "they took off," Miller said.
"I'm so thankful that she is with Keri now and Keri is taking care of her for me," Miller said.
"I couldn't believe it," Miller said, describing how he felt after learning about the attack while he worked late at night on the Internet in his London office. He said he had seen his daughter five days before she left England for the resort during Wednesday's funeral service at Canyon Ridge Christian Church on Lone Mountain Road.
"Everything is so ironic," Tony Miller said. "She chose a place with no problems at the same time there were terrorists there."
After learning of the attack, the father frantically called Kristi's and Keri's cell phones. "I never got a call back," he said. So he caught a flight to Cairo to look for his daughter.
"People ask me, 'How can you be so brave?"' Miller said about his trip to Egypt. "I didn't do anything more than any husband, any father or any brother would have done."
Miller said he was angry at terrorists who kill innocent lives. "I'll never understand it, our guys are dying day after day."
"The people who did this are nobody, they have no courage. They are getting theirs right now," Miller said, his voice choking.
The father praised Egypt's people for reaching out to him before he returned to Las Vegas July 28.
Mohamed Abou El Dahab, who was sent by the Egyptian government to help the family, said that Egyptians believe in solace for the grieving, but the country would not give in to terrorists.
"We will not give in to terrorism, we will not give in to criminals who want to dictate our way of living," he said.
A tearful 13-year-old Lauryn Miller, Tony Miller's youngest daughter, said she remembered Kristi as "really bright, a spirit. She was the perfect big sister."
Lauryn was in the office with her father at the time of the attack. "I was devastated," she said. "I didn't want to believe it."
Two car bombs and a bomb in a backpack demolished a luxury hotel, an Egyptian neighborhood and the entrance to the beach leading to the Red Sea where Kristi and Keri had taken a swim. Investigators are examining whether Islamic militants in Sinai, possibly with international ties, carried out the bombings. The death toll stands at 64, but officials said they fear it could go to 88 after all bodies have been identified.
As her father spoke to friends after the funeral, Lauryn described the terrorists as "monsters, greedy, selfish monsters."
Her 21-year-old sister Stephany Miller said, "Kristi has become my inspiration and I want to follow in her footsteps. Live life to the fullest and follow your dreams like my sister did."
Miller's stepmother, Mary Miller, cried as she urged family and friends to go on with their lives. "Let us all know, we must not be weakened by this act of terrorism. We must not live in fear. We should go on with our lives as Kristi would have wanted us to."
Best friend Deana Tubin said that she would carry memories of Kristi with her for the rest of her life.
"This is not goodbye, my love, this is so long," Tubin said.
Life-long friend Kristina Angell said that Kristi gave her the courage to intervene when another girl at Durango High School was being picked on.
"She was like a ball of energy," Angell said. "She was really sincere."
Both Angell and Miller were cheerleaders, took dance lessons together and, before high school, played with Barbie dolls.
Janet Kuehnert, Kristi's boss for a decade at Huntington Beach-based Innovative Patent Services, remembered meeting the 17-year-old high school graduate wearing pink shorts, a tank top, flip-flops and a tongue stud.
Kristi got the job because she was determined to succeed, Kuehnert said.
"The schedule she kept would have crippled a lesser person," Kuehnert said of Kristi's full-time job, school work and her dancing lessons.
Kristi had been accepted at Cal State Long Beach where she planned to earn a business degree, Keuhnert said.
One day Kuehnert and her employee were looking at a magazine with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the cover. "I said, 'You could be on that cover,' pointing to Condoleeza Rice," Kuehnert said.
"No, I'm going to be on that one," Miller told Kuehnert, pointing to a copy of Fortune 500.
"Kristina's tale was brutally ended, but she was about living," Keuhnert said. "She had a hungry heart, for life, for excitement."
Keuhnert saw Kristi in December before she left for London.
"She understood the American dream, she was a driven girl," she said. "Being the only American over there killed in a terrorist attack. You think, what are the odds? It was a beautiful place, heavily guarded. After all, she didn't go on vacation to Baghdad."
As Kristi spent the past few months with her father, she seemed to radiate happiness, Keuhnert said after viewing a short video shown at the service.
"Kristina is a link in the family chain," Keuhnert said. "I don't think the family chain is broken."
Miller was buried at Palm Memorial Park in northwest Las Vegas.
