Smarts spread message of safety

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her bedroom in 2002, marked the second anniversary of her return home by teaching other Utah children how to avoid danger.

"There are people out there who are going to take advantage of them, and they need to know how to stay safe," said Smart, 17, who went missing for nine months after she was kidnapped from her Federal Heights home.

Smart and her parents spread that message of safety along with the Girl Scouts of Utah Association on Saturday at the second annual Public Safety Fair.

The fair was held exactly two years after Smart was found on March 12, 2003, walking in Sandy with Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Mitchell and Barzee remain jailed on kidnapping charges.

The fair also marked the 93rd birthday of the Girl Scouts organization.

Cheri Beck, director of communications for the Utah Girl Scouts, said the main focus of the fair is to help children "not be scared, but be prepared." Children were able to sign up for self-defense classes by r.a.d. KIDS and make identification kits complete with a DNA sample and fingerprint for each child.

"It's a way to get everyone together and create awareness," Beck said.

Smart's parents, Ed and Lois Smart, are honorary chairs of the "Partners in Safety" program that sponsors the annual fair hosted at eight police departments throughout the state.

Ed Smart said the best way for the family to celebrate Elizabeth's safe return was to help other kids realize they can safeguard themselves against strangers.

"We feel so incredibly blessed to have Elizabeth back here," Ed Smart said. "We're empowering children to think they can do something to prevent a bad situation."

Most importantly, Ed Smart said, parents need to educate their children about safety, communicate with their children and be prepared with identification information about their children if they were to go missing.

"It's not enough to talk to your kids, you have to go far enough to role play through so they know what they can do," he said.

Self-defense and empowerment role playing taught by the r.a.d. KIDS non-profit group is exactly what helped 9-year-old Candy McBride escape from a man earlier this year. Candy said the man tried to grab her as she walked home from the bus stop in her Provo neighborhood.

Candy, however, had taken mandatory self-defense classes by r.a.d. KIDS at her elementary school. She turned to kick the man in the shins and then elbowed him in the face, giving her enough time to run away.

Empowering children like Candy is the key focus of the Partners in Safety program, said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a member of the safety partnership.

"The way we protect ourselves from evil people is to work together," he said.

---

E-mail: estewart@desnews.com