Elizabeth Smart Signs On As ABC News Commentator.
Elizabeth Smart, the 23 year old Salt Lake City woman who was kidnapped as a teenager and held captive for nine months, has signed on to become a contributor for ABC News – appearing as expert on GMA, World News Tonight and Nightline.
“This is definitely not about looking backward and telling her story, which has been well told and retold,” an ABC spokeswoman said. Smart will “helping viewers understand missing-persons stories from the perspective of knowing what a family experiences when a loved one goes missing,” appearing “when there are missing children or missing-person cases in the news.”
Smart was kidnapped from her home back in 2002. I was a news producer at the time, and stayed in Salt Lake for a month covering the story, meeting and interviewing the family and going on searches. I can tell you – my fellow producers and I were long gone (as were all the news crews) by the time, nine months later, it was reported that she was found. All of our live trucks had been less than a mile from the site she had been held captive and we were stunned – absolutely speechless when we learned she was found.
It’s amazing to see how well Smart has done, considering all she has been through.