“I didn’t used to talk nearly as much about my mother,” Diane wrote in her memoir. “I took her for granted, as children do their mothers. It was not until she died in 2000 that I fully realized what an incredibly huge influence she had been on me and how much I owe her.”
Those words resonated with me. Although my mother never was sent to a concentration camp or worked in the Belgian Resistance, she was and is a fighter in her own way, and she was instrumental in making me who I am today. My hope and dream for the future is that I can be as good a mother to Chloé as my mother was to me. I want Chloé to know that beauty isn’t everything, that it’s important to be kind, strong, independent, and intelligent.
My mom is the glue that held my family together through thick and thin, never more so for me than in the first few months after I was rescued.
* * *
The morning of March 12, 2003, started out cold and foggy. My captors and I had spent the previous week hitchhiking back to Utah. Two cops at a Burger King in Las Vegas had confronted us, and for a moment I felt a surge of hope that I might be able to communicate something to them, but Mitchell talked his way out of the situation while Barzee gripped my arm, reminding me what would happen if I tried to scream or run. My family would be murdered, and it would be as if I had murdered them. As the cops walked away, I felt hollow and hopeless. It felt like forever ago that my captors and I had first started the trek in the blazing sun and heat. I remember feeling like I was dying of thirst, wondering if I would ever make it back to Salt Lake alive.
A truck driver picked us up and drove us all the way to Orem, Utah. When we arrived, it was late at night or maybe very early in the morning. He had stopped at a trucking lot where he was delivering his load and told us we had to get out. This was as far as he could take us. Mitchell, Barzee, and I jumped down from the semi. I was so tired I could hardly walk straight, especially with the heavy bags I was forced to carry. Mitchell led the way out of the lot where the semi was parked. As we approached the highway, I was barely aware of what was around us, but Mitchell pointed down the road a little ways and said there looked to be a place where we could hide out until morning.
We crossed the highway and entered a park called “Camelot.” It was all reminiscent of King Arthur and the round table. It seemed somewhat secluded and, most important, empty. We walked to the back of the park, and Mitchell set up the small two-man tent that all three of us squished into. I was so tired, I didn’t even care about being smashed next to Mitchell. He had done so much to me already that this hardly seemed like anything. It must have been only a few hours later that he was shaking me awake, saying we needed to get up and get out of the park before it opened and people arrived. We quickly packed everything up and headed out.
When we were back out on the road again, a student picked us up and apologized that he couldn’t take us farther but would drive us the couple miles down the road to a McDonald’s for breakfast. I was allowed to get an Egg McMuffin, which may not sound all that special, but at the time, having hardly eaten for several days, I thought it was mouthwateringly delicious. The past nine months had never been easy as far as food was concerned. More often than not, I went without, so having something warm and hot and full of flavor—something that hadn’t come out of a garbage can—was a real treat.
After breakfast, we headed back out and slowly started making our way the fifty miles or so remaining into Salt Lake City. We took several different buses, and when questioned about who we were or why I was wearing a wig and sunglasses, Mitchell would make Barzee and me get off the bus and wait for the next one. Mitchell and Barzee were becoming more and more anxious the closer we got to Salt Lake. Mitchell said that once I was back at the hideout where they’d taken me the first night I was kidnapped, I wouldn’t be allowed to leave again. I understood that he meant I was a prisoner who’d been given a life sentence—or a death sentence. Still, I was just so happy to be back in Utah. At least I would live or die here, close to my family, in this place I loved. I was intent on soaking up every possible moment of freedom I could.
We finally made it to the outskirts of Salt Lake. We went into a Walmart to “plunder” (steal) some essentials that we would need to survive in that original camp, including new hiking boots for all three of us. As we walked out of the store, I remember stopping at a bulletin board that had pictures of missing children on it, looking for my face, for my real name. I had only a brief opportunity to look at it before Mitchell grabbed my arm and pulled me away. He told me to stop drawing attention to myself or else. I knew what that meant, so I went along quietly, disheartened that I hadn’t seen a picture of myself. Have people stopped looking for me already? Do I not qualify to be on the bulletin board? These were the thoughts going through my head as we walked out the door and continued on our way, heading back for the mountains on the northeast side of the Salt Lake Valley, in the direction of my home and my family.
We were heading north on State Street, barely out of the Walmart parking lot, when a police car pulled up, and then another and another. There seemed to be dozens of them, more than I had ever seen at once, and the officers were all jumping out of their cars and coming over to where we were standing. They began questioning Mitchell. Standing there in his shadow, I was terrified. I’d been warned many times that if I ever did or said anything out of line, he would kill me, kill my family. That was a very real threat for me; out of pure survival instinct, I did exactly as I was told. Up to this point, I had never seen my captors fail at something they had said they were going to do to me. They had kidnapped me, chained me up, starved me, abused me. He had raped me, and she had facilitated that. Mitchell had been stopped and questioned—even spent time in jail—but no one had ever intervened to protect me or my family. How could this time be any different?
But this time was different. The police were absolutely persistent in questioning my captors, and finally—finally!—one of the officers must have noticed or had a gut feeling that I was scared and unsure about talking to them with my captors being so near. So the officer separated me from them by a few yards and started questioning me alone. Feeling Barzee’s eyes on me, fearing this would turn out the way it always did, I initially held to the cover story that I had been told to tell—that I was their daughter—though the struggle going on inside me was intense. The officer told me how much my family missed me, how much they loved me, and how no one had ever given up hope of finding me. It was only then that I was able to admit who I was. I whispered it, barely breathing, scared of what might happen if he didn’t believe me. And for a moment, it seemed that my worst fears were coming true.
The officer turned me around and handcuffed me.
Now my breath was coming in short, hard gasps. What? Why? No! He placed me in the back of the police cruiser and left me there, terrified and confused. Why had he just told me how much my family loved me and missed me and then handcuffed me? No one spoke to me as I was taken to the police station in Sandy, where I was brought into a small, windowless room. They took the handcuffs off me and told me I could remove the disguise I’d been forced to wear. I did as I was told, removing the wig and sunglasses. No one told me what was going to happen next. Then they left me alone and closed the door.
I sat on the edge of the battered sofa, too dehydrated to cry, needing my mom. I just wanted my mom. My mind ran wild. Why hadn’t they taken me home? Why wouldn’t they let me call my parents? Why had I been handcuffed and treated like a criminal? I scrunched my toes inside the stolen hiking boots. Was I going to be sent to prison? Compared with where I’d been the last nine months, prison didn’t actually sound that bad.
And then the door to this closet-like room opened, and Dad came bursting through it. He was across the room in an instant, hugging me, crying, and asking, “Elizabeth, is it really you?”
I was unable to answer. It was so abrupt; I think I was in shock. My throat closed, choking me. I was crushed by the reality of how much had changed over the last nine mont
hs. My dad looked older, exhausted and torn up. I knew he was seeing only a shadow of the girl I had been before. I was a young woman now. I had grown and matured. My body was bloated and malnourished. I was no longer the healthy kid I had been when I was kidnapped. My face was red and swollen. I’d been exposed to blistering sun, hard labor, and horrific abuse.
But it was over.
I started to realize that I was safe. I was with my dad, and he was going to protect me. He was never going to let anyone hurt me again the way those two people had hurt me the last nine months. Everything was going to be all right. And I could breathe again.
Amidst our hugging and crying, an officer poked his head in the room and asked if we would accompany him up to the main headquarters in downtown Salt Lake. We got into the back of his unmarked maroon car and headed up to HQ. While we were in the car, my dad pulled out his cell phone and called my mom. No doubt she would be frantic, scared for the worst, prepared for it to be nothing, hoping for the best; such a flurry of emotion and panic. When she answered, I could hear her voice, and it sounded so beautiful. How long had I tried to remember how she sounded? How long had I been desperate to hear just one word from her? She was my mother, and I needed her. I had always needed her. I always will need her.
Of course, like a sick cosmic joke, right as my dad passed me the cell phone, the dumb thing’s battery died. Honestly, what a moment to have a dead battery! We made it to the police station, where I was led upstairs, and my mother was waiting for me there. She was standing when I entered the room. She was wearing black pants and a black shirt with white trim around the V-neck. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. There was no hesitation with her whatsoever. We both ran to each other and hugged. That moment did not last long enough. I didn’t want her to ever let go again.
My brothers and sister were all waiting to see me as well, but in the midst of our reunion, the police interrupted us and said I had to be taken for debriefing. That part is a little bit vague in my memory, but I do remember that I was taken to a small room where I was questioned by an officer, and there was a woman there. In the meantime, my dad had called John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted and told him that I had been found and the police were questioning me. John informed my dad that the police didn’t have any right to do what they were doing right then. That was all my dad needed to hear to go ballistic on the police. I was immediately taken from questioning and reunited with my family again.
Then the rest of my family went home to wait while my mom and I were taken to the hospital, where I had an extremely thorough physical examination and a rape kit done. Mom sat with me through everything—the tests, the poking, the prodding—and even though I don’t remember it, I learned later that she was there listening to the police “debrief” me at the station. She heard and saw it all. I can’t bear to think how difficult that must have been for my mother, watching her daughter recount unspeakably awful things that had happened to her, being tested and checked out for all sorts of diseases, having every media outlet in the world desperate to snap a picture of her.
In the following days, weeks, and even years, Mom never once faltered. She has been a constant pillar of strength and support for me. Now that I have my own daughter, who is my absolute world, I can’t imagine anything more painful than going through everything my mom went through with what happened to me, but never, not once, has she ever shown a sign of weakness. Never has she ever pushed me or my pain away, even for a second, to spare herself what I know she must be feeling. To some degree, I suppose we all have at least a little selfishness in us, and perhaps it has been selfish of me to think of myself first and not consider how she might feel—what she felt upon seeing me, knowing that a part of my life had been ripped from her.
Later, during the various hearings and long trial, Mom sat listening to testimony from doctors, specialists, attorneys, and other people—some sane and some not so sane—and then finally to me. Listening to me recount every little detail of how I was abused, raped, and mistreated for nine months. Listening without ever looking like she wanted to be somewhere else. She was there in each moment, standing strong for me. As I sat on the witness stand and said everything I had to say, I kept telling myself, It doesn’t matter how you feel. You have to do this. Just pretend to be someone you want to be like. I’m ashamed to say I sat there thinking of Grace Kelly, Her Serene Highness, the Princess of Monaco. I didn’t want to look like I didn’t have it together or like the defense attorney had ruffled me in any way. It worked, but I really should have been thinking of Mom, not Grace Kelly.
That’s what I thought about when I saw the title of Diane von Furstenberg’s memoir: The Woman I Wanted to Be. I thought about a strong mother, a mother with spirit. That’s the chord it struck.
Mom has never backed down from anyone or anything when it comes to her children. That being said, she has always wanted us to know how to work, to be independent, and to realize that if we want something bad enough, we’ll find a way to get it. She is my ultimate role model. So when Diane von Furstenberg says about her mother, “I owe her so much, because she made me so strong,” I totally get that.
Shortly after the trial of Brian David Mitchell came to a close, I returned to finish my mission in Paris, and while I was there, I received an invitation from Diane to come to New York, where she wanted to honor me—to present me with an award and a donation of $50,000 to a nonprofit of my choice. (It was with that money that my dad and I were able to start the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, whose mission statement is “Bringing hope and stopping victimization.”) I was overwhelmed by her generosity and by the idea that this woman I so admired actually thought of me in this positive light. That was several years ago, but I felt hopeful that she’d remember me and be open to answering some of the questions I’d been pondering. I sent her an email, asking if she might consider speaking with me for this book. I was elated when she graciously made time in her crazy schedule for a conversation.
I’m at Lake Tahoe in California, because my college roommates—some of my very best friends in the world—decided we needed a reunion, and as fate would have it, the reunion was scheduled for the same weekend I’d scheduled an interview with the queen of a fashion empire. I want to sound confident when I talk to her. I want to sound like a woman without fears, asking deeply thoughtful questions. I’ll admit I’m so nervous, I’ve hardly slept at all. During the night, I woke up more times than I can count. But now my phone call with Diane is only minutes away.
I read over my questions, hoping she won’t be disappointed in me. I sit out on the deck, breathing in the cool morning air and looking at the giant trees surrounding me. I scroll through my contacts and hit Call. The phone is ringing. I sit, holding my breath. Diane answers with her distinctive voice—that rich, unmistakable accent—and suddenly, everything is fine. After all my stressing and worrying, Diane is warm, friendly, kind, and perfectly lovely. She immediately makes me feel at ease. Maybe she knows how nervous I am, but she talks like she’s known me for a long time and we’re just catching up.
She asks, “So what is the book about?”
“It’s about healing, moving forward, surviving, not giving up.”
“Well, my mother was a survivor, as you know,” she says, “and so I was the daughter of a survivor. I met a very interesting woman, and she said that there are two types of survivors: the ones who did not die, and the ones who live. There will be those who will always remember and be the victim, and ones who just won’t. You have to go on, you have to learn, and you have to heal. Resentment and holding on to the past is so toxic.”
“Did your mother ever talk to you about how she survived the death camps?”
“Not in detail,” says Diane. “I said, ‘How did you survive?’ She would say, ‘Well, you know—say it’s raining. Just imagine it’s raining, and you go in between the drops.’ She wanted to protect me from the suffering. She clearly suffered a lot, and she clearly kept a lot of things inside that she never tol
d me. You have a daughter, though, right? The most important thing you can ever give your daughter is to make her fearless and independent.”
I smile, thinking there’s probably nothing I could do to stop Chloé from being fearlessly independent.
“Do you think your mother’s spirit was ever broken when she was in the death camps?”
“She really wanted to survive. There’s something about survivors that is very unique. She was different after, though. My father said that when he saw my mother again, when she came back, he didn’t recognize her. She was a whole different person. He was taken aback because he left a happy, innocent girl, and found a broken woman, so to speak. She noticed it, and she said, ‘You don’t have to marry me,’ and he said, ‘No, no, I will.’ But I don’t think she was ever the same again.”
When I think of Lily returning from the camps, a weakened shadow weighing less than sixty pounds, to find that the man she loved still loved her, I think of a line from my all-time favorite book, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. There is a part in the book when Mr. Rochester is speaking to Jane very passionately, and he says, “Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you … I want: not alone your brittle frame.”
Brontë so beautifully stated what it means to be a strong spirit trapped inside a body that is small and subjected to bullying and abuse. Mr. Rochester describes eloquently what each of us possesses inside. Our bodies are not who we are; our bodies can be destroyed, but the “wild, free thing” that resides in each of us is our spirit, the essence of who we truly are. I love this moment in the book so much. It confirms to me that horrible things can happen to us, to our bodies—including death—but even that does not destroy us. It simply frees our spirit.
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