Stephanie Mast
speaker
221 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Stephanie Mast’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Senator Cruz's staff.
Yes. You've been in for 14 years now, so we've been married for 18 years, so our entire married life, most of our married life has been in the Marine Corps. And proud of, I mean, love the experience. And our four, we have five kids, four of them are boys. A lot of them want to grow up to be a Marine, or that's what they say at this age. And so just red-blooded patriots through and through.
I tell them to be open to, but absolutely. I mean, I'm, I'm proud of the Marine Corps and just, you know, even our service members in general. And so I've, I love the community. And so we've been happy to be a part of it.
18 years? Well, married 18 years. That's not a question. I met him when I was 11, he was 12. Oh my God. Childhood sweethearts, you know, grew up together, started dating in high school, and have been together ever since. So really, I mean, truly best friends, and been through everything together.
Yes.
Okay. Well, first of all, I'll tell who she is today. So she is a five-year-old girl that loves, just like any other girl, loves baby dolls and anything girly, pink, purple, coloring, just loves them. loves life, loves dogs and playing outside with her brothers. Um, and she's just a blessing and a true joy, just the most gracious little girl that you could possibly imagine.
Um, she has a remarkable past. And if you saw her today, you would never believe what she has been through.
But I'll never forget the phone call that I got because after that initial talk, walking to chow hall, he called me and it was in the afternoon my time. And that was not the normal time for him to call me. So initially that scared me like, okay, what's going on? It wasn't very long into his deployment. And so I picked up the phone and I'll never forget the tone of his voice.
It just sounded different. And because I was searching instantly, like, okay, what's going on?
And he said, hon, there's this baby. And I was standing in the kitchen. I just stopped. And I was just listening to him describe that it was a lone survivor of an Al Qaeda raid. And they don't know what they're going to do with this baby. And so just trying to sort through that. And I mean, as a mom, my heart goes out.
We didn't know at that point, boy, girl, we just knew baby and it was injured and its future is, you know, up in the air. And so I was like, well, we can do something. We will volunteer for it. And I mean, I'm already a stay at home mom, have young kids right around that age range. I know how vulnerable and just, you know, how precious children are. So it's like, we'll do something.
And he's like, well, I'm glad you said that because I already volunteered. He's like, but you know, they're going to do a family trace and there's still a lot of things to figure out. So he's like, we'll see.
I mean, it wasn't it was more of like if there's I mean, it was like he said, guaranteeing a safe outcome. So whatever that is, long term commitment. It wasn't just like make sure the baby's bandaged up and OK. It was like, absolutely. We'll open our home to a child that has a need like that.
Well, initially it was just seeking guardianship. And what Joshua said, it was, it was at the, it was like one step just was the first step. And like Joshua said, it was getting a visa so that she could, because she did have ongoing medical needs. Well, she'd actually back up. It was the initial conversation.
And then a couple of weeks later, we see the very first photo and we, we call it the baby in the box. And there's this little girl in a home Depot box and, on the floor of a hospital wrapped up in blankets. And so that was the first time we found out basic age that it's an infant and that it's a girl.
And then it just, when you see a, put a face to it, that is just where you're like, okay, what can we do? So initially it was just trying to guarantee safe, like ongoing medical care in the United States. And we were seeking guardianship, but that was, you know, after you found out what the requirements are going to be.
It was very organic. But it ultimately, I think, stemmed from our worldview in that every life is precious. It doesn't matter race, ethnicity, background. I mean, she was an innocent caught in a terrible war. And so it was just a protective instinct. And we were put in the position. There was, like he said, dozens of Americans. This was not just us.
This was across the board, the medical staff at Bagram. There were several people trying to protect and advocate for this one.
Yeah, but I would like to say that, and I already alluded to this, is that she was loved by so many people. It wasn't just Joshua and I doing it.
It was the medical staff, and like you said, the rangers, and there was people pulling together to the fact where we called her, to answer your question, Sparrow, after those initial phone calls, and we started to get more information about her origin, and genuinely started to care about her.
Showing 141–160 of 221 · page 8 of 12
← Previous
Next →