Disappearance draws national media

Smart said he and his brothers and their families were grateful for the outpouring of support from the community when Elizabeth was abducted and now they want to make sure they do the same for Hacking's family.

"We're focusing on the positive portion," he said. "There's nothing to make us believe she's not alive."

Smart said he had been in regular contact with his brothers, including Dave and Ed, Elizabeth's father, who were out of town. He said they all planned to help in the search for Lori once they returned.

A rash of recent kidnappings and disappearances of women in their 20s has gripped Utah the rest of the nation. Some cases are still unsolved, while others turned out to be fabricated disappearances to run away from some sort of stress.

Among the notable cases:

• Oregon authorities are still searching for 19-year-old Brooke Wilberger, a Brigham Young University student. Wilberger vanished May 24 at a Corvallis, Ore., apartment complex where she was working. Police believe she was abducted.

Police have named one suspect in the disappearance. Sung Koo Kim, 30, is being held on $10 million bail on charges of stealing women's underwear from college dorms. Police found 3,000 pairs of women's underwear at Kim's home, as well as dryer lint labeled as being from the apartment complex where Wilberger was last seen.

• Friends and family feared 22-year-old Utahn Rachel Honsvick had been abducted May 21 in Ohio after she didn't return from an evening jog. The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office used bloodhounds and helicopters to track down Honsvick, with a total cost of the search to taxpayers of $2,300.

Honsvick was in Ohio working as a nanny and planned on returning to Utah weeks later to get married. When she went for a jog, she left her cell phone, keys and purse at the Cincinnati home where she had lived as a nanny for nearly 2 1/2 years. The Hunter High School graduate showed up at the sheriff's patrol headquarters two days after being reported missing, and the search was canceled. She had been staying at a friend's house in Kentucky. Honsvick has been charged in Ohio with inducing panic, a misdemeanor.

• University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin was slain after apparently being abducted from a mall parking lot Nov. 22, 2003. Scores of volunteers searched for months for any sign of Sjodin, but the official search had been halted during the severe winter weather. Investigators found her body after the spring thaw.

• And a University of Wisconsin-Madison student was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to repay police at least $9,000 for staging her March abduction.

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E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com; preavy@desnews.com