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Landing on his feet
A bomb almost killed Air Force's Erik Mirandette, but it didn't take away his determination
Evan Semon © The Rocky
Erik Mirandette returned to the Air Force Academy in June, 14 months after the attack in Egypt. Despite his injuries, Mirandette says he's "never jumped higher" competing in the pole vault.
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Landing on his feet
By Clay Latimer, Rocky Mountain News
May 9, 2007
AIR FORCE ACADEMY - Wandering through an ancient Egyptian marketplace two years ago with his brother and two friends, Erik Mirandette couldn't help but marvel at his good fortune.
Only a few days earlier, the Air Force Academy cadet had finished the adventure of a lifetime - a 9,000-mile, four-month motorcycle journey that started in Cape Town, ended in Cairo and twisted through jungle, desert, war and stunning landscape in 11 African countries.
In a few months, Mirandette, always looking for his next adventure, would be returning to the academy, where he was a pole vaulter and aspiring astronaut.
And now, in his final hours in Cairo, the Grand Rapids, Mich., native with the winning smile and easy charm was caught up in the camaraderie of the moment, chatting and joking with his boyhood buddies as they turned up and down unfamiliar streets and congested alleys, searching for souvenirs. As dusk fell, on April 7, 2005, he turned to his brother Alex, 18, smiling.
Then horror struck.
In a flash, Mirandette was lifted off his feet by a nail-packed bomb and hurled 20 feet into an alley, his left arm hanging by threads of flesh.
Smoke and blood engulfed the air; alarms shrieked; survivors stumbled down the scorched street, sidestepping the dead and dying and dismembered limbs.
"In the heat of the moment - I thought maybe it was just a dream. Then I looked at my body," Mirandette said. "My clothes are ripped off. My skin is gone. The nerves in my leg are severed. My eardrums are blown out.
"There are about 50 nails sticking out of my head. Hundreds of nails sticking out of my leg. I said to myself, 'This is a bomb, someone did this.' And I thought to myself: 'My life will never be the same after today.' "
Within hours, Alex died in a Cairo hospital. Erik barely survived, was airlifted to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, underwent the first of dozens of surgeries, returned to Grand Rapids and retreated deep within himself, worried he'd never walk - or care - again.
"I died in Egypt," he said. "It took a few months to figure out why I wanted to live, why I should choose to continue to fight. Until I figured that out, I wasn't a good guy to be around. I was fighting people for no reason. I was nasty."
Gradually, his physical wounds mended, his mental scars faded and Mirandette returned to the academy in June, 14 months after the day his life changed forever.
Today, the 24-year-old junior is on the dean's list, recorded a rare perfect score on the academy's physical fitness exam and is soaring again in the pole vault.
"I've never jumped higher," said Mirandette, who finished eighth in the Mountain West Conference indoor championships and second at the Service Academy championships.
What makes Mirandette's accomplishment more remarkable is his left arm; the explosion ripped out 65 percent of his triceps, leaving a jagged crevice where muscle and ligaments once had been.
The scar is a glaring reminder of that spring day in Cairo - and of next spring, when he hopes to join the war against terror as an agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
"It's disgustingly ironic," he said. "We'd survived all these dangerous places. Then the most brutal and horrible thing that could possibly happen unfolds right in front of our eyes. And it kills my brother.
"How could this be? There hadn't been a terrorist attack in Egypt in nine years. If I can save someone else from the horror I experienced . . ."
Bond of brothers
Handsome, athletic, tough, quick with a laugh - that was the Erik Mirandette who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Grand Rapids. Because their parents were divorced when they were young, Erik and Alex turned to one another for companionship and kicks, transforming the backyard of their mom's white-frame home into a haven for adventurous hijinks.
"We were bonded in a way that wouldn't happen in other circumstances," Erik said. "We always had each other."
Mirandette graduated to scuba diving, sky diving, rock climbing, boxing, motorcycles - but the pole vault was his passion.
"It was perfect for him. It was dangerous," his father, Rick, said.
But Mirandette was more than an adrenaline junkie. As a high school junior, his uncle dared him and a group of friends to do one push-up that day, two the next day, three the day after that . . . for a year.
"During the first three months, I kept forgetting," said Mirandette, who taped a sign - "Push-ups" - on his bedroom ceiling as a reminder. "Every now and then I'd have a busy day and go to sleep, and then wake up at about 2 o'clock in the morning and go: 'Oh, no, I forgot to do my push-ups.'
"More than anything, I wanted to see if I could do it. The difference between 100 and 300 push-ups isn't much. It just hurts the same longer."
As he warmed up for the 2000 Michigan state track and field championships, Mirandette took a fall and blew out an ankle, seemingly ending his medal hopes.
"The coaches said he couldn't continue. But somehow he pulled it together," Rick Mirandette said.
Mirandette cleared 14 feet, 6 inches, claimed his gold medal and limped home. A few hours later, he knocked off 235 push-ups - on his left foot.
"He wasn't going to let anything stop him," his father said.
The push-up challenge had become a metaphor for Mirandette, a test of iron discipline. On Labor Day 2000, he ripped off 366 in a row in 7 1/2 minutes.
"Growing up, I wasn't the fastest, I wasn't the strongest, I wasn't the smartest," he said. "I was really quite average. I realized at a very young age - probably about the seventh grade - that there were a lot of kids a lot better than me. But I had one thing on them: I could always work harder. It became a part of me."
Ready to fight terror
Marching up "Warrior Ramp" in summer 2001, his first day at the academy, Mirandette's dream of becoming an astronaut appeared to be taking off.
"If I could live in in any other era, maybe it would be the age of exploration. Going places that had never before been discovered, like Magellan," he said.
Less than a month into his first semester, however, terrorists flew hijacked airlines into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, the bloodiest day on American soil since the Civil War.
"I was very excited to graduate and go fight terrorists," he said.
Mirandette thrived in the academy's old-fashioned culture of sacrifice and hard work, getting good grades, grinding away in the pole vault, assisting the student council, studying and drilling in the shadow of war.
But he grew weary of the daily grind and dropped out during his sophomore year, seeking adventure and spiritual solace in 2003 as a relief worker with a missionary group in Morocco.
"Erik's like a lion in a cage sometimes," Rick Mirandette said.
Arrest ends mission
At 6-foot and 165 pounds, with blue eyes and square shoulders, Mirandette was an obvious outsider in Morocco, where he studied Arabic before plunging into his new job.
"I pick up languages pretty quickly," he said. "And I'm a social guy. I got to know a lot of people."
Mirandette eventually traveled to a garbage dump near Melilla, a gathering spot for thousands of refugees hoping to cross Spain's heavily guarded border into Europe. Watching as they sifted through trash for morsels of food, he agreed to deliver food, water, and eventually medical supplies to the camp - a crime in Morocco.
The mission ended when Mirandette was arrested for the fourth time as a Moroccan soldier pointed his gun at his head.
After nearly two years, as Christmas approached in 2004, it was almost time to go home. But first . . . a final adventure with his brother, Alex, a pole vaulter who had claimed his school's award for superior achievement and leadership just months before, an honor Erik had won three years earlier.
No warning in Cairo
Buddies since middle school, Erik, Alex, Michael Kiel, 21, and Kristopher Ross, 22 started their four-month ride up the continent on dirt bikes, stopping to donate time at churches, orphanages and AIDS clinics along the way. Danger became routine as they bounced along remote roads.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, an angry mob and rebel soldiers toting AK-47 rifles surrounded the group, demanding money.
In a remote stretch of western Tanzania, Alex's bike broke down at dusk in a jungle where lions hunt for food. In the next village, they rode into the aftermath of a multiple murder.
"The hardship came with the beauty," Erik said.
Arriving in Cairo on April 5, exhausted but exhilarated, Erik and Alex called home, where they planned to celebrate Alex's 19th birthday in two weeks.
Next on the schedule: sightseeing.
On the first day they visited the great pyramids of Giza; on the second, they toured the Cairo Museum in the morning, then took a taxi to the Khan el-Khalili marketplace, their last stop in the city.
Approaching from the opposite direction was an 18-year-old man, carrying a green bucket containing 20 kilos of TNT and nails.
"He saw four young, strong, white, blond, blue-eyed Americans," Erik said. "We were the perfect target."
The man walked between the Mirandette brothers and pulled out a barbecue lighter. The explosion blew out windows, killed two people and injured 15.
"There was no warning whatsoever," Erik said. "It was utter hell. The smell, the sound of moaning, of people coming in and out of consciousness. The walls were all red. I'm breathing this moist smoke, moist from blood. The bomber's body parts were all over. It was worse than the worst I could imagine - far worse."
A backpack saved Erik's life, shielding his spine and organs. Alex absorbed the brunt of the blast, which ruptured his spleen, severed a carotid artery and blew him backward into the street - though the magnitude of his injuries wasn't immediately evident.
"He was the first person on the first ambulance," Erik said. "We thought he was going to be OK. We thought I was going to be the one to go, actually.
"I slipped into shock before the second ambulance came. I lost so much blood. I barely had enough to keep my heart beating."
Close to death
During the next several days, Mirandette battled fever, infection, lung failure and severe shock - a moment when his resolve almost failed him.
"My heart stopped beating like a normal heart," he said. "It felt like I had a hummingbird in my chest. I stopped being able to breathe. I'm watching this light above me and it gets really bright and then it gets really dim and then it gets really bright. I realized: 'I'm dying right now.'
"I said: 'Not yet, not yet, not yet.' I focused on trying to stop it, trying to hold my breath. I keep breathing, and then my breath got a little bigger. I reached out with my right hand and got a blanket from a corpse next to me and covered myself. Gradually, the lights came back into focus."
It wasn't until he awoke in the hospital ward early the next morning and spoke to his parents on the phone that Mirandette learned Alex was dead.
"I'm so sorry . . . so sorry," he said to them. "I did the best I could."
Mirandette was flown from Cairo to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and was stabilized.
On April 21, as his parents prepared to bury his brother, Mirandette was flown to a Grand Rapids hospital and placed in a critical care unit.
Kiel, recovering from third-degree burns and multiple puncture wounds, and Ross, recovering at home from perforated ear drums and blurred vision, gathered by his bedside.
In May, Mirandette received a call from the White House, inviting him to greet President Bush at Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids.
But as summer approached, the haze that had engulfed Mirandette since the explosion in Cairo was only beginning to clear.
For months, Mirandette struggled to lift his left foot. He was chronically exhausted from insomnia and pain. His weight dropped to 135 pounds. He underwent one surgery after another, many to remove shrapnel; even now, 35 nails remain in his body.
But through all the long nights, Mirandette dreamed of returning to the academy.
"They told me there was no chance at all for me to meet the physical requirements. That really made me mad," Mirandette said. "When I could stand, I stood. When I could walk, I started to walk. When I could run, I started to run. I started to do regular push-ups, then one-armed push-ups. I never stopped."
But his long recovery was far from over. Bent by grief, he drifted through classes at a local college, weekend parties, desultory days at his mother's home.
"I wanted my brother," he said.
At a Grand Rapids bar one night, Mirandette and Ross impulsively decided to move to Hawaii; within weeks, they found themselves on Kauai, working, surfing and living a life of laid-back leisure.
It was there, during spring 2006, that Mirandette started writing The Only Road North, a 300-page account of his African experience.
"It was my catharsis, my opportunity to free myself from this burden," he said.
Fourteen months after he was blown into the air, the force literally ripping off his clothes, Mirandette slipped into a dark-blue dress uniform and returned to the Air Force Academy. Greeting him were grateful - and incredulous - friends.
"Our hope was that he would have a healthy life and maybe come back to the Air Force Academy - although I didn't even think that was a realistic shot," Air Force track coach Ralph Lindeman said. "I would've never dreamed he'd resume his athletic career. But pole vaulters are kind of crazy. They're willing to get inverted on a pole 18 feet high. They're the kind of guys who'll jump out of airplanes, get on motorcycles and go across Africa."
Added Craig Harmon, Mirandette's immediate supervising officer at the academy: "Often it comes down to the individual and their own desire and will to succeed. He's a case study in that . . . (And) he brings to the table something that nobody else has - real world experience. He's grown up very fast."
'Sense of calling'
At first blush, the atmosphere seems almost serene today at the academy, a dramatic contrast to the chaotic days after 9/11, when America's service academies went to maximum alert.
But the war has taken a toll. Fifty- three West Point grads have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A year ago, applications at the Naval Academy, West Point and the Air Force Academy reached five-year lows.
Mirandette, though, has embraced his fresh start at military life. He now studies political science/international relations instead of physics, immerses himself in studies of terrorism and counts down the days until he returns to the battlefront.
"I've got questions I'm never going to be OK with," he said. "I'll live the rest of my life scarred inside and outside. But I've got a sense of calling. I want to prevent attacks on other good people.
"Call it romantic. Call it idealistic. But I tell you, it's worth getting up in the morning for. It keeps me going."
Taking flight
Before returning to the Air Force Academy in June, Erik Mirandette's best pole vault in a college meet was 14 feet, 9 1/2 inches, in 2003. Since returning, his top effort is 15-7 3/4.
• Mirandette: "Sixty-five percent of my triceps is gone. But I work the 35 percent I have left really hard. Your heart and work ethic are never going to leave you. If you push hard enough for long enough. . . ."
About the book
• The Only Road North:
9,000 Miles of Dirt and Dreams.
• By: Erik Mirandette.
• Publisher: Zondervan.
• Book signing: June 1 in Colorado Springs, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 1565 Briargate, 719-266-9960.
thats horrible hearing about something like that happening to anyone, let alone someone you knew.. 