In a land she’d called home for only 10 months, Sabika Sheikh was mourned as family Sunday.
The tragic exchange student — one of eight children and two teachers fatally gunned down at Texas’ Santa Fe HS on Friday — was remembered by her heartbroken host family in a memorial prayer service.
“We had no idea what God was going to send us,” said host dad Jason Cogburn, speaking of when he and his wife signed up to house a student through the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange & Study program. “He sent us one of the most precious gifts that I’ve ever had in my life.”
Cogburn recalled how in the six months Sheikh, 17, spent among their brood — which already included three daughters and three sons — they did everything together, even joining her in fasting over Ramadan, as is tradition for Muslims.
“We loved her and she loved us,” he said. “She came here to represent Pakistan, and let me tell you something, she represented it well.”
Host mom Joleen Cogburn — clad in a handmade Pakistani prayer shawl Sheikh gave her for Mother’s Day — struggled to choke back tears as she remembered the teen, saying she’d come to learn about American culture and compare it to her own.
Jaelyn CogburnAP“I always told her, ‘Sabika, you have a warrior’s heart,’” Joleen said. “She wanted to . . . impact the world, and I think she’s done that.”
Part of that impact was felt by young Jaelyn Cogburn, in her first year at Santa Fe HS after a life of home schooling when Sheikh came to live with her family.
“It was very hard for me [to join school] because I didn’t know anyone. I met Sabika and she didn’t know anyone either,” Jaelyn said. “She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and I will always miss her.”
In pictures of the pair on Cogburn’s Instagram account — including one of the students heading to prom a week ago — Sabika appeared to be living the life of a typical American teenager.
Troubled junior Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, sang “Another one bites the dust” as he opened fire with his father’s shotgun and handgun, killing 10 and wounding at least 13. He’d originally planned to commit suicide, but ultimately surrendered to police.
Politicians who came out to pay tribute to Sheikh on Sunday demanded that her death lead to change.
“We cannot allow her life to have been in vain,” said Rep. Al Green (D-Texas). “I know that when we have finished our grieving, we have to take action.”
Green presented an American flag that once flew above the US Capitol building to Aisha Farooqi, a Pakistani diplomat assigned to Houston. Farooqi will in turn give the flag to Sheikh’s parents when her body is returned Monday to her home in Karachi for burial.
“[Sheikh] wanted to be a diplomat in a foreign office,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. “Even through her death, she will continue to be a diplomat.”
