Four days after her husband, Charlie Kirk, was shot and killed at a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, Erika had to explain to their 3-year-old daughter why her father wasn’t coming home. “What do you tell a 3-year-old?” Erika Kirk said in her first public address after the assassination. “I said, ‘Baby, daddy loves you so much. Don’t you worry. He’s on a work trip with Jesus so he can afford your blueberry budget.'”
Eight days after Kirk’s death, the board of Turning Point USA unanimously elected Erika, 36, to be its next CEO and chair, to help lead the organization her late husband co-founded in 2012 when he was just 18 years old.
