WEST VALLEY CITY -- It's been a year since the bodies of five little girls were found in the trunk of a car on a hot August afternoon.
For the parents, it has been a year of tears, a year of missing their smiling faces and a year of knowing life has to go on without their daughters.But it has also been a year of knowing they've accomplished something by convincing car manufacturers to make trunks less hazardous.
"The girls are the five little angels. This is what they would want us to do," said Charmoin Dickinson, the mother of McKell Hedden.
The parents have worked the past year for Audrey Cleo Smith, 2; Jaesha Lynn Smith, 4; Alisha Richardson, 6; Ashley Marie Richardson, 3; and McKell Shae Ann Hedden, 5.
All died after their curiosity lured them into the trunk of the Smith's Saturn on Aug. 7.
After searching for them for 45 minutes, Dixie Smith popped open the trunk to discover the children.
The deaths hit Utah hard, attracted international attention and propelled changes in the automotive industry to prevent trunk deaths.
In April, Ford announced all of its 2000 models would have interior trunk releases.
General Motors, the manufacturer of Saturns, immediately began researching the most efficient design for trunk releases. It offers retrofit kits that include a latch that once the trunk is opened won't allow the trunk to close unless it is reset. Resetting the latch is easy for adults but difficult for children.
Paul Smith, father of two of the girls who died, joined forces with the National Safe Kids Coalition in urging the safety devices be installed in all car trunks. He wants the other car companies to follow GM and install latches that prevent a trunk from locking unless reset.
His mission has taken him to Washington, D.C., where he testified before the Professional Panel on Trunk Entrapment.
While the parents' efforts have been gratifying on one hand, they all know there is more work to be done and more people who need to be educated about preventing a similar tragedy in their lives.
"We have done all we could, but it won't change a thing unless people buy the kits and take the time to realize it could happen to anyone, anywhere. We are determined it won't happen again," Smith said.
His wife agreed.
"People don't want to believe it will happen. Well, it couldn't happen to us, and it did. For the price of dinner and a movie, you can prevent this."
What a wonderful Friday it started out to be last August. Alisha and Ashley, who are cousins to the Smith girls, were over to the Smith house to swim. McKell was there as well, part of the troupe of five that were inseparable.
It was a hot day, perfect for splashing in a wading pool.
Dixie Smith said she went inside to prepare some lunch for McKell's older brother, Auztin.
When she returned outside, the girls were gone.
"This was not a long, drawn-out thing. I checked everywhere and could not find them."
Even though all the children were warned to never leave the yard, and they followed those rules, Smith decided she'd check the park. She hopped in the Saturn, drove there, found nothing and alerted neighbors about the missing girls. She returned and parked the car.
Another neighbor, ticking off a checklist of places to look, asked if she'd checked the trunk.
"I honestly never thought about there. I walked around to the back of the trunk and popped it open," she said.
The time it took to go from mild panic to utter devastation happened at lightning speed, she said.
"It wasn't very long from the time the girls were missing to the time they were found. You go from having a missing child to not expecting to find what you did."
The girls managed to get into the trunk because the car was unlocked. Like many new cars today, the Saturn comes equipped with an interior trunk release that owners can disable if they want to.
One of the little girls hit the release, and since they'd lived their short lives always doing things together, they all climbed into the trunk and perished from the heat.
The parents now think of everything in terms of five.
"For all of us, we lost five children that day," said Dixie Smith. "We didn't lose two, or we didn't lose one, we lost five. They all acted like sisters."
Jaesha always watched over her little sister, Audrey, who was nicknamed Goose. She was tight, however, with McKell, who earned her nickname, Pickles, from her grandfather.
Their headstones symbolize how close they really were. Both had learned each other's phone numbers and loved to talk on the phone to each other.
The top of the stones are decorated with phones in a bed of heavenly clouds, with one receiver connected to another receiver.
"They had to have everything the same. They were so close they'd finish each other's sentences," said Dickinson, McKell's mother.
They all played dress up and went on snail hunts.
Audrey refused to pick them up, but she'd happily point them out to her sister, cousins and friend.
"They were so close. Picture your best friend, and magnify that by five," Dickinson said. Ashley was a "mama's girl" who liked to be creative on the walls. Her big sister, Alisha, loved to make books.
Like anyone who has lost a loved one, birthdays and holidays are particularly hard for the parents.
The Richardsons, Kevin and Lisa, had to endure it first, with Ashley's birthday that fell on Oct. 1.
"The night before she died, she asked me what kind of party I was going to give her," Kevin Richardson said. "I told her I'd have the biggest party I could. I didn't break that promise."
With all Ashley's friends there, the Richardsons did a balloon launch for their girl who would have been 4.
Trunks are hard for the parents. Dixie Smith refuses to have one. She has a sports utility vehicle instead.
Paul Smith said Saturn officials offered to put the car in storage or sell it in another state.
None of the parents wanted that.
They paid the car off.
Kevin Richardson took a sledgehammer to it, a release of grief that made him feel better.
"We all know the car didn't do it," Dixie Smith said. "We know the car didn't grow arms and snatch them and do this."
Still, it was difficult not to view the car as the death trap it turned out to be.
Paul Smith and Kevin Richardson took it to a salvage yard to watch it get smashed.
The equipment to do that was broken that day.
"We didn't want to leave there with the car intact," Paul Smith said. "When the workers found out what had happened, they took a front end loader to it. And the next day, when it was smashed, you couldn't even tell the color."
Now, the parents never have to wonder when they see a green Saturn on the road.
"We know that can't be the car," Dixie Smith said.
The Smiths have since had another child, a little boy named Hunter that Dixie Smith was carrying when the girls died.
All the girls knew he'd be a boy and had given him a nickname, Mickey Mouse, even though the Smiths didn't learn the gender of their child until the birth.
The girls knew, however, because they talked to him through the mother's belly button. All five.
Over the year, community support and the outpouring of sympathy has helped.
Someone mows and fertilizes the grass where the girls are buried. Someone leaves five sprigs of flowers.
"We don't have any idea who does it," said Lisa Richardson, the mother of Ashley and Alisha. "But someone makes sure there are five flowers there."
The parents have found five pennies and cupcakes to celebrate birthdays in heaven and five french fries with fry sauce.
They took the time and money to purchase benches and had a poem engraved that was penned by an Ogden woman the day after the tragedy.
Even though the girls are gone, they feel they remain with them in certain ways.
"To hear our conversations, you'd never guess the girls had passed away. We talk about them like they're here," Dixie Smith said.
Dickinson agreed.
"They are with us all the time."
Dickinson even said the blue swing that hangs in the tree at the cemetery -- it was the girls' favorite -- will have to come down at Christmas time because they've outgrown it.
They're able to joke about the new cars at the cemetery on the girls' 16th birthday.
But the tears are never far away.
"Every time we accomplish something, there is this brief feeling of pride because of what's been done," Paul Smith said. "But immediately after, you get this hollow feeling because nothing we do will bring the girls back."
Their passion, then, is the goal that no more trunk deaths happen, ever.
The parents believe their angels have been hard at work to make that come true.
This summer, there has not been a single trunk death.