Kidnap Survivor Elizabeth Smart Tells: Meet My Baby Girl

In An Exclusive Interview, The New Mum Shares Her Joy.

- Sharon Keeble

She’s the kidnap victim whose story shocked the world. But 17 years after Elizabeth Smart was snatched from her home and held captive at the hands of a depraved couple, she has reason to smile once again. She has become a mum for the third time – to a baby girl, Olivia.

“Being a mum is one of the best jobs in the world for me,” Elizabeth, now 31, tells New Idea in an exclusive interview. “There was once a time I didn’t think I had a future, let alone become a mother.”

Elizabeth hit international headlines when she was abducted on June 5, 2002. It was an average day for the then 14-year-old who went to bed after a dinner with her parents, Ed and Lois, and her siblings. She was sharing a room with her sister when she woke up to a man’s voice saying: “I’ve got a knife at your neck. Get up and come with me.”

“At first I didn’t respond, I was frozen,” Elizabeth recalls. “Then I felt the knife and he tried to pull me out of bed, so I opened my eyes. As a child, I’d been taught about stranger danger, but nothing could have helped me then... He led me out of our house at knife-point.”

Elizabeth’s abductor Brian David Mitchell urged her to walk quickly, never leaving her side. “He told me that I was his hostage and I remember saying that my parents will do anything to get me back. He told me that he couldn’t let me go, that his wife was waiting for us. I asked him if he was