For nine months she was allegedly held captive by a self-proclaimed prophet.
During that time she was either tied to a tree in the mountains above her home or forced to wear a veil or some other disguise while in public.
But today, Elizabeth Smart, one year after she was found walking along State Street in Sandy along with her alleged kidnappers Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, is back to being a normal 16-year-old girl.
"We're doing fabulous. We couldn't be happier. We couldn't be better. Everything is just wonderful. Our family is back intact. We're doing things we've wanted to do but weren't able to do in the past year," Elizabeth's mother, Lois Smart, told the Deseret Morning News.
Today, the biggest problems on Elizabeth's mind are wondering what her friends are doing that night or if her dad will let her borrow the car.
Elizabeth's parents said the nine months their daughter was gone seemed like an eternity. But the year since her return has flown by at lightning speed.
"This year has gone by so fast. It's amazing to think it's been one year," Lois Smart said.
Upon visiting the Smarts' house recently on a sunny afternoon, it was hard to find anything out of the ordinary from any other typical Utah family. William Smart, Elizabeth's 5-year-old brother, answered the door for reporters coming to interview their parents for a one-year anniversary story. He then returned to playing with Siah, one of two dogs the Smarts acquired shortly after the kidnapping.
Inside the Federal Heights home, left of the entryway to the Smarts' home is the kitchen where a cut screen once hung that was a key focus of the investigation. Straight ahead is a stairway leading to the bedrooms. To the right is a living room where in a corner sits two harps and pictures of Elizabeth and Mary Katherine.
Ed and Lois Smart greet visitors today with broad smiles and energy. It's a sharp contrast to the couple who summoned all their strength to face the media week after week during the nine months their daughter was missing.
"There's a much bigger appreciation on our part for the little things in life," Ed Smart said.
Life today
Elizabeth is a sophomore at East High School. She was tutored during the summer after her return and was able to rejoin her friends in their grade despite missing a year of school. And Elizabeth excels in her classes, according to her parents.
At school, Lois Smart said, the other students don't give her daughter any unwanted special attention. Mostly they just nonchalantly say, "That's just Elizabeth," if they see her in the hallway.
Her friends and the telephone keep Elizabeth busy. She also continues to play the harp and has a part-time job tuning harps at a local store. The biggest worries for Ed and Lois Smart? Elizabeth recently earned her driver's license and is starting to date, they said, smiling.
In the weeks that followed Elizabeth's return, the media spotlight on the Smart family was intense.
Elizabeth made her first public appearance during a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House April 30, 2003. She and her parents watched President Bush sign the National AMBER Alert bill into law.
Hollywood began calling immediately, eventually resulting in a book, a made-for-TV movie and interviews with Elizabeth herself on "Oprah" and with Katie Couric on NBC.
Some criticized Ed and Lois Smart when the national media interviews and TV movie book deals were announced, saying they were exploiting their daughter.
Looking back, the Smarts say they have no regrets.
"We got to the point where we realized someone was going to (write a book) whether we did it or not. We'd rather have what we felt was important out there," Ed Smart said. "We don't have any regrets about that. It wasn't the most wonderful experience in life, but we felt it was important to do and to have it over with and move on with life."
But as for Elizabeth doing interviews again in the near future, her parents said it's not likely to happen.
"She said before, 'I don't don't want any more (interviews). I did it once, they've seen how I feel, I'm doing fine. That's enough,' " Lois Smart said.
One burden of such intense media exposure is often being recognized in public. Ed and Lois Smart said there are times they're recognized immediately or, on other occasions, they receive stares from people who think they look familiar.
But, the Smarts said, it's a small price to pay for having their daughter home.
"The end result was so wonderful and such a miracle that those kinds of things are incidental to what really was important," Lois Smart said.
Elizabeth in books
The book, written by Ed and Lois Smart, wasn't the first published about the kidnapping, and it won't be the last. Ed's brothers, Tom and David, along with Deseret Morning News columnist Lee Benson, expect to release a book soon.
Former Salt Lake Tribune reporters Michael Vigh and Kevin Cantera also have a book deal and are hoping to have theirs published by the summer.
Vigh and Cantera were fired from the Tribune April 29, 2003, for supplying information for a story that appeared in The National Enquirer tabloid. Each reporter was paid $10,000 by the Enquirer. Tribune editor James Shelledy resigned from his post because of the Enquirer flap fallout.
Vigh, who now lives in Las Vegas, told the Deseret Morning News he and Cantera are writing a tell-all book of what happened behind the scenes at the Tribune and "what really happened subsequent to our firing."
Vigh said the book will be less about the Smarts and more about the Tribune and Shelledy and how they were told that what they did was OK.
Cantera, who still lives in Salt Lake City, told the Deseret Morning News he and Cantera both made some mistakes and learned from them and their book will lend some perspective to the events and the news business.
Vigh said they are still discussing whether to release the names of the sources who supplied them with the information used in the Enquirer story.
Court delays
While the past year has sped by for the Smarts, the same can't be said about the legal proceedings of Elizabeth's alleged kidnappers, Mitchell and Barzee. They were arrested a year ago, but there's still no trial date in sight.
On Jan. 9, Barzee, 58, was declared incompetent to stand trial and ordered to receive mental-health treatment at the Utah State Hospital. This week, however, she remained in the Salt Lake County Jail waiting for hospital space to become available.
Mitchell's competency has yet to be determined. Two doctors assigned to evaluate Mitchell, 50, split on whether they thought he was competent. Third District Court Judge Judith Atherton will have the final say. Those proceedings have been put off until May 4 while the issue over public access to the hearings is argued and a new lead attorney becomes familiar with Mitchell's case. His original attorney, David Biggs, dismissed himself to take a new job.
But the Smarts said they are not frustrated by the delays.
"I believe the longer it takes for them to do what they're going to do, it just gives Elizabeth that much longer to heal, and the stronger she becomes," Lois Smart said.
Elizabeth doesn't think about a trial or dwell on the possibility that she might have to relive her nine-month ordeal on the witness stand, Ed Smart said.
"She really feels like she is going forward, and it's not something she's living for or worrying her life around. When it comes and what happens, we'll deal with it," he said.
Salt Lake District Attorney David Yocom said he is also taking the court proceedings in stride.
"Obviously, it has gone a lot slower than we expected," he said. "But all things done right take time."
Another matter being handled in the courts is the lawsuit filed by Angela Ricci, the widow of Richard Ricci.
Richard Ricci was considered the top suspect in Elizabeth's abduction up until the time Mitchell was arrested. He was charged July 11, 2002, with burglarizing the Smarts' house. On Aug. 27, 2002, he suffered a brain hemorrhage while in prison and died three days later. Ricci was never charged in connection with the kidnapping.
On Aug. 29, 2003, Angela Ricci filed a civil lawsuit in federal court saying Salt Lake City police wrongfully accused her husband and the Department of Corrections ignored his documented medical problems.
No hearing is scheduled for the lawsuit as the defendants are fighting to have it dismissed.
Conspiracy theories
Despite the charges filed in 3rd District Court, there are some who believe things didn't happen the way they are being told. The Deseret Morning News frequently receives e-mails from people who believe Mitchell and Barzee were only pawns in a much bigger scheme.
A California resident who only identified herself with the initial RN wrote a long e-mail to talk about "the absurdity of this whole fraudulent fiasco in behalf of us "NON-believers" living here in "Realityland." She further wrote, "I'm simply, to put it politely, FED UP with this charade/dog-and-pony show in Utah!"
But Yocom said if he didn't believe Mitchell and Barzee were responsible for Elizabeth's kidnapping, he wouldn't have charged them. If others were involved, he said, he would have charged those people, too.
Yocom said the case is what it appears.
"We think that is the summary of what our evidence shows, and we stand by that. Those facts will be proven in court someday," Yocom said.
The Smarts said they aren't bothered by what others say and prefer not to dwell on the negative.
"People will believe what they will believe, and we can't change that," Ed Smart said. "I just think that you're always going to have naysayers, and there's no getting away from that. And that's OK. We certainly learned to live through that."
Celebrating a miracle
In the weeks leading up to today's one-year anniversary, Lois Smart said Elizabeth has not concentrated on her kidnapping ordeal or thought any more about those nine months than she usually does. She's mostly concerned about the family party scheduled for tonight.
"She's a strong girl. She has strong beliefs and strong ideas and strong goals and desires of what she wanted out of life, and nothing is going to change that for her," Lois Smart said. " The past is the past. . . . Let's move forward."
Publicly today, Ed and Lois Smart plan to attend a Partners in Safety fair at the Salt Lake City Police Department's Pioneer Precinct, 1040 W. 700 South. The daylong fair is designed to raise awareness on how to prevent children from being abducted and to show that Utahns and law enforcement, working together, can make changes.
A number of child identification kits will be available at the fair as well as videos on self-defense classes for children, something that all of the Smart children are learning now, Ed Smart said.
Smart, who has been an outspoken advocate of the AMBER Alert system, said he will continue his efforts to bring attention to the AMBER Alert and help others with missing children.
After today's fair, Ed and Lois Smart said they will have a private party with Elizabeth and the rest of their family. And rather than thinking about those nine months, Lois Smart said, "I'll be thinking where we are now."
"If we could hope for any miracle in our life," Ed Smart said, "we got it."
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com