Ex-Hostage Carroll Home With Family

(CBS/AP)  Journalist Jill Carroll was back on U.S. soil Sunday, tearfully embracing her parents and twin sister after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq that she said gave her a deep appreciation for the myriad simple joys of freedom.

"I finally feel like I am alive again. I feel so good," Carroll said. "To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face — to see the whole sky. These are luxuries that we just don't appreciate every day."

The 28-year-old Christian Science Monitor reporter arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport just after noon, and was quickly driven away in a police-escorted limousine to the newspaper's headquarters.

She didn't step out into public view, but reports on the Monitor's Web site, along with photos, showed a joyful and tearful reunion with her parents and twin sister.

Carroll has said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted windows before she was released Thursday after nearly three months in captivity.

She was seized Jan. 7 in one of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods, near where a Sunni Arab official had agreed to meet her for an interview that never took place. The gunmen who abducted her killed her Iraqi translator.

She was accompanied on the flight by Monitor colleagues, who described her seven-hour flight back to the U.S.

Carroll was touched to find a red rose on her dinner tray, the Monitor reported. Later, a flight attendant dropped off a copy of Friday's USA Today in which she saw her own face framed by a black head scarf. It was a photo of the giant poster that had been erected in Rome.

She was tickled to see pictures of her family and kissed the photo of her father, Jim Carroll. "He looks good," she said, and ran her fingers over the photo of her mom, Mary Beth, the Monitor reported.

Editor Richard Bergenheim said colleagues were grateful Carroll was home safe.

"When Jill is ready, the Monitor will begin to tell her story and we will also hold a press conference where she will speak. But we will not be making any further statements on Sunday and hope that the Carroll family's privacy will be respected," Bergenheim said in a statement.

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