Abduction victim Elizabeth Smart recalls waking up in 2002 to find a strange man holding a knife to her throat and threatening her.
As Smart’s abductor, Brian Mitchell, led her away from her Salt Lake City home, Smart thought she’d never see her family again and that she was going to die.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is it. This is the end.’ ”
Smart, 14 at the time of her kidnapping and now a sophomore at Brigham Young University, was in Denver on Friday to address participants at the 2007 National Amber Alert Conference.
The conference, designed for Amber Alert coordinators and their partners, was sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department.
Elizabeth’s disappearance was the first use of Utah’s Emergency Alert System, known then as the Rachel Alert, which was created to quickly broadcast information about an abducted child.
The Rachel Alert, named after a Utah girl who was abducted and killed in 1982, was adapted from the Amber Alert, named for 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996.
Most states, if not all, now use the Amber Alert term to bring uniformity to the system, said Paul Murphy, the Utah Amber Alert coordinator.
Smart’s abduction, in the middle of the night from her home as her parents slept, generated a massive search, with more than 1,000 volunteers looking for signs of the girl in the foothills of Salt Lake City.
The mystery and brazenness surrounding the crime generated widespread media attention to Smart’s disappearance and spotlighted the Amber Alert system, Murphy said.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Elizabeth Smart and think about what she did,” Murphy said. “As far as I’m concerned, she was the one who elevated worldwide attention about the Amber Alert.”
Since 2003, Amber Alert supporters point to several developments as proof of success, including:
All 50 states now have statewide Amber Alert plans.
Wireless companies, online service providers, and other private and public entities have undertaken partnerships in support of Amber Alerts.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that perpetrators have released abducted children after seeing Amber Alerts posted.
The four-day Denver conference brought Amber Alert stakeholders from across the country together to, in part, brainstorm ideas on improving the process and to share resources and successful outcomes with each other.
Ron Laney, associate administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention with the Justice Department, said Smart’s appearance was important because it brought an emotional, human element to the conference.
“It means everything in the world that she was here,” Laney said. “At conferences you can tend to push around a lot of paper, but we all need that caring spot to say that ‘this is important,’ and that’s what Elizabeth did.”
Smart was found in March 2003 in a Salt Lake City suburb with Mitchell and a women after people called police saying they had seen her there. Her abductors were indicted for kidnapping but were ruled unfit to stand trial.
Smart told the Amber Alert gathering that the work they do continues to be important.
“Children just like me are relying on you to come and save them,” Smart told the group. “I think the Amber Alert does work and it does save lives.”
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 orknicholson@denverpost.com
