The liberation of Julie Mulligan

This episode of the Rotary Voices podcast is brought to you by Archaeological Paths. Explore Egypt with renowned archaeologists. Visit www.archchaeologicalpaths.com for more information. I was in bed. It was around I'm going to say 11:30 our time and uh actually falling to sleep. The phone rang. John, I picked up on her voice right away and I said, "Yes, Julie, what's wrong?" "Haven't you heard?" "Heard what? I'm kidnapped." A man's voice comes on the phone sharply. He demands 100 million nera or about $700,000 for her safe return. "We'll call back," the man says. He hangs up. That phone call from northern Nigeria to a home in Drayton Valley, a small town in Western Canada, occurred in April 2009. The person who had been held hostage while on a Rotary mission was Julie Mulligan, a member of Drayton Valley Rotary Club. John was her husband. Following the call, Julie endured 13 days of fear, uncertainty, and unimaginable strength before her release. 16 years have passed since that traumatic event befell Julie. How has it changed her and her family? Is she still a part of the Rotary family? Recently, Rotary magazine managed to track down Julie. Today, she and her husband live in British Columbia, where, much to our delight, they remain devoted Rotary members. I was tasked with interviewing her. Even though Julie agreed to the talk, I wasn't sure if she was ready to open up about her harrowing abduction or how much she was willing to discuss. However, after spending hours speaking with Julie, her husband John, their friends, and family, I was most surprised at how Julie's experience engendered a deeper understanding of the nature of forgiveness and of our interconnectedness. This is the Rotary Voices podcast. I'm Kate Silver. [Music] So, how many times have you been to Africa? Well, I've been cycling in Tanzania, cycling in Morocco, have been to Ethiopia and Nigeria. My first trip to Africa was in 2008. So, I found this company that was going to Tanzania. We cycled there for I think about 10 days and were really in the back roads and cycling through meeting the people. I absolutely fell in love with Africa because the people were so warm and they were friendly. When we came back from the trip, I was in this kind of reverse culture shock and I was trying to figure out, okay, how can I get back to Africa? And so then I was the president for the club of 2008, 2009. And there was some communications that landed on my computer that they were looking for a team leader for a group study exchange to Nigeria. And so I applied and eventually was chosen to lead the team in Nigeria in April. So what happens on a group study exchange? Group study exchange now is being replaced with vocational training. One district will exchange with another and there will be a team of five to six people, one Rotarian leader and the purpose of it is for vocational and cultural exchange. And leading into that trip before you ever set foot on a plane, what were your expectations? What were you excited about? What were you anxious about? I was first of all just excited to get back to Africa. That was my very first excitement. And the strongest reason why I wanted to go, I was really looking forward to just connecting with the different Rotarians because I had learned already that Rotarians, no matter where they're from, they all have the same heart. I was never worried about going to Nigeria. But when Don was driving me to the airport to meet up with my team, he said, "I want you to call the district and if it's safe, 100%." And I said, "John, don't worry." And so I picked up the phone and I called the district person who's in charge of the group study exchange and he said, "Absolutely, everything's totally fine. Not a problem. Don't worry." And so that was that. And my son had said to me, "Mom, don't go. Don't go." But he was always worried about me and he always had a little bit of anxiety whenever I left. I wasn't worried at all. We were just excited. Like we were excited to start our journey. At 44, Julia is slender with caring green eyes, brown hair, and a quick dry wit. She's the oldest of the group, which is made up of four other professionals in their 20s and 30s, and she's the only Rotary member. Their first stop, Kaduna, located in North Central Nigeria, Kaduna is a bustling and sometimes chaotic city of about 1.2 million. Although it's a major industrial center, the town's infrastructure and services have failed to keep up with its growth. Power outages are frequent and many people lack access to safe drinking water. Across the state, also called Kaduna, about 45% of people live below the national poverty line. Today, kidnappings have become a lucrative business and a growing threat in parts of Nigeria, including the state of Kaduna. In addition to armed bandits and criminal enterprises that use kidnappings for ransom to fund their operations, Boo Haram and other militant groups have carried out mass abductions for ideological reasons and leverage in negotiations with the government. In March 2024, gunmen kidnapped 287 school children in Kaduna State. But in early 2009, when Julie and her group went to Nigeria, this wasn't the case. Back then, kidnappings were concentrated around the country's oil fields to the south in the Nger Delta. But in the north, visitors were welcomed with open arms. In fact, showing visiting Rotarians the real Nigeria is something that Leonard Eigini has always loved to do. And he is among the hosts for the Canadian group's visit in 2009 with plans to later lead the Nigerian team that is to visit Canada. The word risk did not occur to any one of us in any part of Nigeria because it's something we have never experienced. [Music] About a week into the trip, Julie and her Nigerian host, Moses Cander, are in the car. Okay. So, you're coming back from was it a meeting? We came back from a Rotary meeting where we were the guests of honor and the rest of my team had been taken back to their homes. So, it was just you and Moses in the car. Just Moses and I in the car. Correct. Most of the homes that I saw had big gates across the driveway and the gate started to open and there was a car that was in front of us. There's a teal hatchback and it pulled up beside us and driver rolled down his window. Moses rolled down his window and the driver said, "Do you know Mr. So and so? I don't know the name." And Moses said no. And so then the car started backing away from us and then it stopped suddenly and out jumped three men and the middle one is holding a machine gun. And that's when I realized like this is serious judge. And they went to Moses's side, one of them, and they pulled him out of the car, threw him to the ground. And then they came to my sides and once they grabbed me and I just dug in my feet and I just screamed Moses and they hit me in the back with a machine gun and pushed me into the back of the car. So then I sat in between two of the guys. There were four men in the car and they put my head down and we sped away and I kind of started to lift it a bit and I said, "Why?" And they put my head down again and they said, "Don't lift your head and don't speak or should you?" John is in shock following the phone call with Julie. Usually, he's a soft-spoken voice of reason when it comes to his family. Whether it's Julie, her two teenage children, Stephanie and Mackenzie Dean, or his adult sons, Greg and Rob Mulligan. But this is uncharted territory. It was in the middle of the night. My bedroom light on said, "Come downstairs. Your mom's been taken." That's Julie's daughter, Steph. I was like taken away, taken away. So I go downstairs and everything just kind of happened so fast. The phone was ringing and John was talking to himself and all this and he said, "Don't wake your brother." So we stood there and he told me that she called and she said that she had been kidnapped and pretty shortly after a few people showed up. Those people who showed up were Alex and Gaelen Blae, Mary and Terry Drader, who are all Rotarians, and John's son, Greg. So, the five of us sat there, and we sat there for a good hour to an hour and a half. Finally, we were sitting there about 5:00 in the morning, and I said, "Okay, guys, I've had enough. I'm calling the staff sergeant." They came and staff sergeant and met Corker and we sat there and we determined the next best number to call is K division in Edmonton and within 2 hours there was two people on our doorstep. These two people were agents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP, Canada's National Police Force. One of the first things they said to me, they said, "This is where you're going to be located until [Music] we get [Music] released." In the morning light, Julie assesses the situation. When the sun came up, I had mosquito bites all over all over my legs, the bottom of my legs, and also my arms. And that panicked me because I didn't have my malaria medication. I discovered it was an unfinished house that was in the midst of construction and it didn't have a roof. It just this dirt floors. There were actual sun blooms that had already been done with cement. It was incredibly hot. Just the sun beating down on us, especially during the middle of the day. She's starting to make sense of things. The driver, who'd returned temporarily and instructed her to call John, appears to be the boss. The two young men staying with her answer to him. In the daylight, they look to be about the same age as her teenage children. As lizards and scorpions skitter by, she starts talking to the guys, telling them about herself, her kids, her family. For a short time, she has access to her camera before it's taken away. I immediately took the camera over to the guys that were with me the night before, and I started going through pictures cuz I wanted them to realize that I was a mother, that I had kids, I had a couple grandkids by that time. I wanted them to see that side of me, make me human, and to develop a relationship. She asked them, "Why are they doing this?" The younger one, who says his name is Anthony, needs money for school. The older one, who calls himself Oyo, just needs money. They had this idea that North America, that Canada, the case would end with gold. She tries to negotiate with the two. I got this idea. I said to Anthony, you know, I could probably get like $1,000 for my ring and what if we left here because you're probably being left here anyways. So, what if we left here and I'll sell my ring and I'll make sure that you get the money and you can go to school on os. And so, I was trying to get them on my side that way. They don't take the bait and she tucks her ring into her bra along with the photo memory card from her camera for safekeeping. Recognizing that Anthony and Oo are not the masterminds, but most likely pawns, Julie feels a kind of maternal connection to them. Years later, she will think of them as the boys. And as the situation wears on, Oo starts to call her auntie. Julie calls John the next day. When are you flying over here? When are you coming? What's happening with the money? Julie's voice is John's salvation. She's alive. But it's also torture because she's distressed. She's frightened. She's impatient and even angry. And under the careful watch of the police negotiators, he's not allowed to say what he really wants to say. I had to stay calm. I couldn't show emotion. I couldn't show my love because that would give them more energy. By now, the house is in full lockdown to squaltch any news from spreading and putting Julie at even more risk. The Canadian authorities give Jon permission to have five couples join him in the house. Day in and day out, Rotary friends and family keep him afloat, even as the tension grows. Julie's daughter Steph remembers those days well. It was a lot of commotion and then a lot of stillness. She and her brother are pulled from school and told they can't talk to anyone. We would talk about it being like a submarine in that house because it was so closed off from the world. Everything was just so heavy. Mackenzie and I did a lot of driving. There's lots of country roads. So, we would just go and drive and listen to music and we would call her cell phone and it would go straight to voicemail, but we would put it on speaker and just to hear her say, "Hi, you've reached Julie Mall again." So, we would just listen to it over and over. As the ordeal goes on, the agents advise Jon that the kids shouldn't be at home. They're worried that the kidnappers could turn violent against Julie while on the calls. So Steph and McKenzie are sent to stay with family and friends. [Music] Julie was on the other line and she introduced herself and she said, "I've been kidnapped. I'm being held somewhere in Nigeria and I'm here with the kidnappers who are sitting next to me now and I need some contact information of Rotary members that I know. The call comes in to Rotary International headquarters in Evston, Illinois. David Alexander was the manager of Rotary's public relations division at the time. He feels his adrenaline surge as he's handed the phone. Sitting nearby, general secretary Ed Futa and general counsel Steve Routberg had huddled to come up with a quick game plan and were handling the Canadian Mounties on another line. In order to trace the call, the agents instructed Alexander to keep Julie talking. We had never encountered anything like this before, and I think we all felt a real sense of responsibility to do everything we were told to do. Steadying his voice, Alexander's brain goes into overdrive as he tries every tactic he can to stall the call with Julie. She asks for the phone numbers of specific Rotary members, presumably so the kidnappers can ask them for money. And he improvises the conversation where every line is a question so he can get Julie to talk. I'd say, "Well, can you spell that?" What do you mean spell? like, "Can you spell the last name?" And I remembered her getting very frustrated. What? What do you mean spell it? I was like, "Well, I just want to make sure I've got the right person." And then so she spelled the name. And I said, "Can you tell me what Rotary Club she's a part of?" And she she was getting angry. She's like, "Why are you asking me what Rotary Club? I I just need their their phone number." I like, "Well, we're working on it." What do you mean you're working on it? I was trying to get it past two minutes, but what happened is at about a minute 30, they would hang up and then they would call back and give some more names and we'd restart the conversation. And each subsequent call, her voice got more angry that we were not being able to move more quickly through this list of names that she had. After the third or fourth call, all is quiet. There is a level of when I hung up of real guilt that I wasn't helping her more, but this is what we had to do and so we were doing it. So, you're trying to follow your instructions and you're helping her, but she just wants immediate attention and action and connection. 15 years later, did those calls still haunt you? I mean, it was the most difficult half hour of my work life that I've ever had. Absolutely. I get emotional thinking about it to this day. It was incredibly difficult. A ton of pressure and then a level of disappointment that even in the subsequent days that there was no change in the status and you're always wondering if you missed an opportunity somehow. But I'll never forget it for the rest of my life. No doubt about it. On about the fourth night, the boss orders Julie into a car and they drive to a cramped house in a nearby town. Inside are two new people, a pretty young woman whom she comes to know as Anne and a menacing man named Christian. In her mind, Julie thinks of this as the inside house in the previous site without a roof as the outside house. The boss takes her to a small bedroom with bars on the windows. Now in her own space, she starts scheming. When Anne brings her breakfast, a drink similar to Ovaltine, Julie swipes the spoon and tucks it into a hole in her mattress. And whenever I was by myself, I had this great idea that I could with my spoon I could chip away the cement. And I did that. I worked on that a lot, but didn't help at all. I had two bottles and I filled them up when there was water coming out of the spout in the bathroom and I used them to do like bicep curls. I was really truly terrified that they would rip open my door and use me in front of the pool. And so I practiced taking that mattress off the bed and I moved it across the floor up against the door. I just practiced that. So I did those kind of things. So, I was kind of I was busy. [Music] John's phone rings again. It's the kidnappers. You have 24 hours to have this money in this account. We are going to be taking your wife to a new location, and you might not hear from her or us. if we don't have that money. There are so many things that John wants to say to the man on the phone. He wants to say he'll send the money. He wants to cry and tell his wife how much they all miss her. He wants to beg them to send Julie home. But he has to stick to the script. To pay a ransom could put other travelers at risk. Plus, there's no guarantee that payment would result in Julie's release. An agent writes the word quiet on a sheet of paper. John glares at them, but follows their orders, giving the kidnappers nothing. He's terrified it will be the last call. And they hung up and I'm going out. I cried for 24 hours. the swary of God. [Music] Julie can't understand why Jon isn't paying the ransom. After more than a week, the kidnappers have lowered it to about $68,000. It doesn't make sense that she's still here this long. She's been forgotten. She just knows it. She's convinced that Jon has gone back to work. Everyone has gone back to living their lives. She feels abandoned and incredibly alone. The kidnappers are growing increasingly agitated. Food supplies are dwindling and Rice is now the main stay. There were calls coming into the house for many days. the guy who owns the house calls were coming into him and they would bring it to me and it was a woman on the phone and I thought that it was this Rotarian who was the Rotarian president in Kaduna that I had met but I wasn't totally sure and they asked me the same three questions each time. Are you being treated okay? How is your health? and what are you eating? Every day it was three questions. And each day, each night, I would tell her, "I think I have malaria. We have no food. I just want to go home." The secrets of ancient Egypt have remained hidden for a millennia until now. The world's most famous archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawas will reveal the greatest mysteries of the ancient world and present groundbreaking new discoveries for the very first time this summer. Join Dr. Hawas on his largest lecture tour ever, coming to 33 cities across the United States and Canada from May through August. Be there to witness history live on stage. Register now at zah lectures.com. [Music] 12 days into the ordeal, the phone rings at the inside house. Julie hears muffled conversations. Excitement. Something is happening. There's talk of collecting money, but nothing happens. The next evening, there's new tension in the air and the guys kind of started running around. the girl runs around and they're gathering up all this stuff and they ran out the door and then they came back and they said, "Don't open the door. Don't open the windows. Don't speak to anyone." And so I was just sitting there in the dark, not having a clue what was going on. She learns later that Christian had been arrested. He'd gone to collect the ransom from the woman who had been calling the house. The woman turned out to be an agent of Nigeria's state security service and the ransom drop turned out to be a sting operation. His accomplice got away and word got back to the house that the jig was [Music] up. And then eventually the two boys came back out and they said, "We're going to take you somewhere." and we went outside and we started walking and they just kept stopping alongside the road and then they would go talk on their cell phones. Um we were passing people but then the one time we stopped along the road and OEO said auntie don't follow and they ran away and I just stood there on the side of the road in the dark. I had no idea what was happening. is complete black. Within minutes, a police officer approaches. Initially, Julie pushes her away. For 13 days, the kidnappers had been feeding her lies that everyone was out to get her. But then she relents. She begins to accept that her ordeal is over. Over the next day, she's taken to different police stations where she gives her account of what happened and she identifies Christian in a police lineup. Then finally, accompanied by an RCMP officer who arrived soon after her rescue. She boards a plane and flies home to John, her family, and her friends. He went through his own hell and actually his hell was worse than mine because he didn't know whether I was going to come back or whether I'd been tortured. Julie's release makes the news before John hears about it and his phone starts ringing. First, there's elation. But only when he hears Julie's voice on the phone saying, "I'm okay. I'm okay." does it sink in. After nearly two weeks as a hostage, his wife is coming home. When Julie's plane lands, John is waiting for her at the jet bridge. It's an image he'll never forget. As I often tell her, I says, "I fell in love with you twice when we came down the aisle when we got married and we came down the aisle and you were rescued. Julie, who did not end up contracting malaria, returns home in good health. After Jon picks her up from the airport with a group of family and close friends, Julie enters her house for the first time since she left for Nigeria. Everyone who was at the airport came to our house and there were a whole bunch of people in our house. Also, the mayor stopped by. It was just a lot of people. food being dropped off, flowers. Everyone had really nice things to say about me. And you know, you're so strong, you're so brave, you're so this, you're so that, and kind of seeing it as if I'm observing it instead of living it. Like it's kind of like stepping outside myself, watching that. That went on for days, that part. The next day after after we got home, we kept the kids out of school and and we just like sat downstairs just talked, but not so much talked about kidnapping. We were just uping it. I would say as time went on though, it got better. In the immediate aftermath, Julie struggles with feelings of abandonment. Sometimes she has panic attacks when she's left alone. John wants to keep her close, so much so that he stands outside the door while she showers. Steph has a breakdown when she can't reach her mom on the phone one day. McKenzie, they say, still prefers not to talk about any of it. Julie finds healing in sharing her story. She travels to Rotary clubs to talk about the ordeal and raise funds to help women in Nigeria who suffer from a condition called obstetric fistula, a debilitating injury that can occur during childbirth. Despite her harrowing experience, she makes it clear that she has no regrets. A month after her homecoming, in a letter of thanks to Rotary members, she writes, "I want Rotarians to know that I still believe that the group's study exchange program is the best vehicle to promote cultural understanding and peace. It is second to none in shortening the distance between two countries. To her relief, the group study exchange team from Nigeria still travels to Canada, although the trip is pushed back a couple of months. For a Guinea, one of Julie's hosts you heard from earlier, the visit makes a profound impression. Canada is the first place he's been where people don't always lock their doors or windows. To this day, he still tells his children about what he saw. Mankind is one. Everybody was on peace with each other. After such a traumatic experience, some people might have lost their way. Julie seemed to find hers. As she learned about the people who fought for her, she was deeply moved by the goodness of humans. The outpouring of love and hope that came from around the world was so uplifting and I wasn't even aware of it of course that it was happening to John my husband for my family and for our community. An example of that would be when I was still kidnapped in Kaduna. They had a gathering and over 10,000 candles were lit and just the coming together of all the people that way really inspired me. I had people reach out from all over the world after I got home. One was a woman that I know who was in university in Australia and she had a whole entire university. All of the people involved in the university were praying for me. There was another person that I met at a conference and he said, "I'm actually a bishop from Mexico and we had prayer circles for you." And so there was just this movement going on for peace really. Like yes, my name was attached to it, but it was just something so much deeper. Back at Rotary Headquarters 2, senior leaders up to the general secretary were deeply involved throughout the emergency, reviewing updates from the RCMP with their crisis team and staying in contact with Canadian Rotarians directly supporting the family. Their efforts were bolstered by staff members at Rotary, whose responsibilities included monitoring the safety of global travel and assisting with emergencies. Throughout her life, Julie had participated in countless service projects to help others. Now, she found herself on the receiving end of others kindness. It ignited something inside of her to do more, to not hold back. I thought our traveling was done and that's when our traveling doubled. Within months, Julie and John traveled to Cuba. The next year, they did a group biking trip in China. In 2012, they raised money to build a school in Nepal and traveled there with a Calgary West Rotary Club, trekking to a base camp on Mount Everest. And in 2013, Julie joined other Rotarians in administering polio vaccines to children in India. But she also needed people to see her as a whole person, a complex human, someone who is more than a kidnapping victim. Living in a small town, that was hard. The motto of Drayton Valley is literally pulling together. And everyone had done just that when she was a hostage. But in the after era, she was struggling with that identity. In line at the grocery store, strangers would commend her for being so brave. In her job as a financial adviser, the veil between professional and personal felt permanently removed. She tried therapy. Mostly she found herself on a quest for authenticity. She threw herself into yoga, a practice she once despised, but learned to appreciate for the focus and strength it demanded. She decided to become a yoga instructor. In 2017, they moved to British Columbia to the stunning town of West Colona where the mountains and lakes were teeming with the promise of adventure and serenity. there. Her life has become full and rich. She loves paddle boarding in the morning. She plays pickle ball and gardens. When she and John aren't traveling, they're hosting friends and family. And they found yet another family at the Rotary Club of Colona. Of course, she has emotional scars. I still every once in a while will still do it. I'll just sit straight up in bed like just out of a dead seat. sits straight up and I'll start talking. So, I think those are kind of byproducts of that. She's also highly sensitive to other people's suffering. One time we were riding our bikes and we came across this motorcyclist who had been hit and he was lying on the ground instantly sobbing. finally got myself together enough to get back on my bike riding along and then the ambulance comes going towards this accident and again like so it's a huge trigger for me and I don't know whenever it's going to happen and it's almost this empathy that I can place myself in their shoes of being so terrified even scenes in movies can trigger feelings of distress and leave her sobbing and She can't stand to hear the TV at a loud volume. The kidnappers had always had the television blaring at the inside house. But other things conjure more positive associations. When she was held hostage at the inside house, she would eat a mango every so often, a welcome change from regular meals of rice. Today, the fruit holds a special place. When I bite into a mango, I am transported always. And there's just something I don't know, something hopeful about it in a weird way. Perhaps most surprising, she thinks fondly of Anthony and Oyo. They were not among the four people imprisoned over the abduction, and she wonders what they're doing now. She remembers how even in the worst moments when she wasn't sure she would live, she saw the boy's vulnerability and their bravado and knew they were just kids doing what they thought they needed to do to survive. Julie made it a mission to meet and thank the law enforcement officials involved in her case. traveling as far as Jordan, where one of the agents was based. It's as though she was trying to show them, too, that she's more than Julie Mulligan, the kidnapping victim. Ryan, who went on to become a chief superintendent with the RCMP, remembers an email from Julie nearly 10 years after the ordeal. She and John were traveling to Ottawa, where Ryan's based, and wanted to know if they could take him and his wife to dinner. Of all the hostage taking investigations he'd overseen, this was the only one that led to a personal meeting afterward. Ryan's wife still speaks about it to this day. For Steph, watching her mother march on is inspiring. Hard things don't need to take you down. She couldn't control that she was kidnapped, but she can control what she does after. She did not stop traveling. She did not stop going out of her front door. If you ask Julie, she'll tell you that her family bore the brunt of the trauma. Outside of those brief phone calls, they never knew if she was alive. For all of them, it's been a long recovery, but Julie likes to think they've come out stronger. Definitely changed my life. It changed my family's life for sure, but I like to think that it was for the good. I feel that life is a little sweeter when you know how quickly it can be taken away. [Music] This episode of Rotary Voices was produced by Wyn Wong and JP Swinson with additional production and music by Yu Kim. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify and share it with your friends. Rotary Magazine is the official monthly publication of Rotary International.