Elizabeth รยฏรยฟรยฝ One year later
Elizabeth Smart answered the door to her family's Salt Lake City home Wednesday morning much like she might have done last June 4.
Wearing jogging clothes — a white T-shirt and black shorts — she greeted a Deseret News reporter with a shy smile and hardly a word before retreating to the corner of her family's front room, where she had been playing her harp.
Her willowy frame is in the midst of that inevitable transition from adolescence to adulthood, yet there remains an innocence in her face that does not hint at the nine-month kidnapping ordeal that started one year ago today when a knife-wielding kidnapper snatched her away from her bedroom in the middle of the night.
Police and prosecutors say she spent the following nine months in captivity with Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. The couple reportedly believed Elizabeth was to be the first of seven divinely appointed wives. Elizabeth was tethered to a tree in the hills just 3 1/2 miles from her family's million-dollar home and forced to wear a veil in public. Later, police say, the three traveled to San Diego and lived in a transient camp before returning to Utah and being discovered in Sandy the afternoon of March 12.
Life will never be normal for the Smarts, but in a sense it's slowing down.
"It's like we're fully re-engaged, as much as that can be done," said Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart.
That was evident during Wednesday's visit to the Smart home. The voices of her five siblings echoed through the house, and her father hustled two of them out the door when they were late for school.
After answering the door and disappearing, Elizabeth emerged about one hour later wearing makeup and a blue-and-white striped shirt, her shoulder-length blond hair spilling over her face.
"As you can see, Elizabeth is doing great," her father said.
A year ago today Smart family members were thrust into the national spotlight as they began searching tirelessly for Elizabeth.
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