Bringing Elizabeth Home by Ed Smart, Lois Smart Read Free Book Online Page B

families. But our marriage became stronger, our relationship grew stronger, and our family became closer. We both realized that we wouldn't have been able to survive had it not been for the strength we brought to each other. There were plenty of days when if one of us felt blue, the other would buoy up. We got through this by being best friends. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—that helped us more than relying on each other and believing that we had the necessary faith and trust in God. If we hadn't stayed positive about the outcome or outlook of the situation, that would have directly impacted and affected our other children. Even though Elizabeth was missing, we had a family to look after and be there for. Lois realized that necessity long before I did.
    The statistics are staggering when it comes to a crime such as Elizabeth's abduction. There are 800,000 missing-children cases a year in this country, or about two thousand children a day. Forty-eight percent of the time a child goes missing, particularly a white girl from an upper-middle-class family, the culprit is a close family member or friend. Lois and I couldn't imagine who would do something like this—certainly not anyone in our immediate family. No one came to mind.
    It was reported that this was considered to be the most publicized kidnapping since the Lindbergh case. The summer of 2002 became the summer of missing children, with Elizabeth just one of many. Statistically there were no more kidnappings than usual that summer, just a heightened awareness because of the massive media coverage. That new awareness brought to light the need to have a unified nationwide alert system to aid families of missing children in their search—something both Lois and I became extremely passionate about while Elizabeth was gone, and are even more so now that she is home.
    It is important to note that as we write this book, one year after Elizabeth was kidnapped, we have heard very little about missing children, even though we know there are just as many families as ever out there who are in the same painful situation we were in.
    The hours were passing, and still no sign of Elizabeth. Later that afternoon, a member of our ward phoned to tell me about a wonderful organization, the Laura Recovery Center Foundation . Based in Friendswood, Texas, the Laura Foundation was established by members of the Friendswood community after twelve-year-old Laura Kate Smither was abducted near her home on April 3, 1997. A nationwide search was immediately launched, and more than six thousand volunteers searched round-the-clock until her body was recovered some seventeen days later. Today, the Foundation functions as a volunteer response team, conducting ground searches and distributing educational materials such as the Laura Recovery Center Manual . The manual serves as a comprehensive text containing everything people need to know in dealing with abductions, from organizing search patterns to effective phone bank operations. In 2002 alone, the Laura Recovery Center helped 160 families search for a missing child. The sister of one of the Foundation's volunteers lived near us. She was at our service almost immediately upon hearing the news about Elizabeth. The same day, other volunteers flew to Salt Lake to help set up the Elizabeth Smart Search Center. The Abby and Jennifer Recovery Foundation, Inc. also came from Grand Junction, Colorado, to offer its assistance and was just as helpful as the Laura Foundation. The Abby and Jennifer Recovery Foundation handled most of the out-of-city searches, which meant coordinating airplanes and helicopters for aerial searches, as well as organizing the forest teams and the mountain searches. They did an excellent job managing information coming in and going out as a result of their search efforts.
    Initiating the search teams became very important. Volunteers and offers to help were pouring in. We knew every passing hour meant that Elizabeth was