For nine months we worried, we fretted, we chewed our nails.
Here at the Deseret News we were no strangers to high anxiety during the Smart case. There were many times when we wondered if we'd ever get Smart back.
Not Elizabeth.
Tom.
While news stories of huge proportion sometimes land in your back yard, few land in your photo lab. But the abduction of Elizabeth Smart did just that at a newspaper where Tom Smart — "Uncle Tom" to Elizabeth; her father's older brother — has been the photography department for the past 25 years. Tom, a longtime friend of mine, was the Deseret News photo department manager for years and then, just before the kidnapping of his niece, he assigned himself as a regular shooter again, which was fortuitous, since he had something else to manage: a family nightmare.
He took the Elizabeth Smart case, put it on his back like those lenses as big as space shuttles he used to carry, and never took it off.
He was indefatigable. He didn't sleep the first five days Elizabeth went missing. We called him Al Pacino (from "Insomnia"). Then he discovered even he needed occasional shut-eye. But not much. For nine months he did not relax. He took every minute of vacation time and sick leave he had coming and then asked for more, working the case constantly, organizing searches, hustling the media, deciphering clues. He talked to the police and the FBI so much that they vacillated between deputizing him or muzzling him.
Family came first to Tom. Brotherly love trumped vying for a Pulitzer.
Everyone noticed. Everyone was stunned at how much one man could or would do. Tom's mother, Dorotha, summed it up as only a mother can: "He took his role as oldest brother seriously. You can't minimize what the others (the Smart siblings) did; they put it all on the line, every one of them. David almost lost his business. But Tom, being the oldest brother, took the responsibility for all of them. He just plain wouldn't let it go."
Dorotha and Charles Smart had six kids in 11 years — Tom, Ed, Chris, Angela, Cynthia and David. They were close, but no one knew how close until one of them lost his little girl.
"How they came together and helped each other, it was astonishing," said Dorotha. "I'm just glad we lived long enough to see it."
The Smarts were scattered here, there and everywhere this past Wednesday afternoon. Charles and Dorotha were at their condo in Palm Springs, Chris was just getting off an airplane in Phoenix, David was in Sandy, Cynthia was on the phone at home, Angela was on a beach in Maui and Tom was in South Salt Lake at the offices of the Intrepid Group, the public relations firm hired by the family to help with the search for Elizabeth.
Ed was at his home office when the phone rang. It was the Sandy police, telling him to get down to the station fast.
The first person Ed called was his brother Tom.
Tom did the rest.
By early Thursday, they had grouped back like lightning, this private family that lived out a public ordeal, celebrating together the astonishing return of Elizabeth.
"It's funny," said Angela Thursday afternoon, "when they were growing up, Tom used to terrorize Ed. He teased him unmercifully."
That was the same Tom that Ed had turned to in their family circle that morning and said, simply, "Thank you, Tom. This never would have happened without you."
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.