SALT LAKE CITY -- In her own words, Elizabeth Smart is sharing intimate details about her kidnapping and captivity for the first time in a memoir.
Her book, titled "My Story" details the terrifying time she endured with her captor, Brian David Mitchell.
Smart talks about the paralyzing fear she felt and the day she was saved by Sandy police.
"I asked her, 'What's your name?'" said Captain Bill O'Neal of the Sandy Police Department in an interview with Fox 13 News.
"Elizabeth denied who she was for probably about 45 minutes," Lt. Victor Quezada said.
It was March 12, 2003. Lt. Quezada and Captail O'Neal were two of the first police officers to talk to Smart the day her 9-month captivity ended. While they weren't named, their words were detailed in Smart's new book.
An excerpt from the book:
“'What is your name?' one of the officers asked me.
I felt almost dizzy. I was sick with uncertainty and fear.
'What is your name?' he asked again.
I felt like I was falling over a waterfall. Don't say anything. Don't give Mitchell a reason, or he'll hurt you! Don't give him a reason to hurt your family!”
O’Neal spoke about finding Elizabeth.
"I walked over again and asked her what her name was and she said it was Augustine Marshal,” he said. “Her heart was beating so hard in her chest that you could see it beating through her shirt.”
Another excerpt from the book:
“The officer waited, then leaned toward me, looking me right in the eyes again. When he spoke, his voice was soft and assuring. 'Are you Elizabeth Smart? Because if you are, your family has missed you so much since you were gone! They want you back. They love you. They want you to come home.'”
O’Neal remembered the incident much the same way.
"I kind of whispered to her, ‘It's over. You're safe now. Your family misses you. They want you to come home, are you Elizabeth?,’" O'Neal said.
Quezada said Elizabeth didn’t reveal herself for a while.
"We told her, ‘Your dad has been notified,'" he said. "'He'll be coming down here shortly, so just tell us who you are.' She fought it until the very end.”
Many have questioned why it took Smart so long to speak up. The then 14-year-old had been spotted several times around the Salt Lake Valley, but the Sandy officers knew, the young teen was traumatized.
"I can only imagine the fear after being threatened for months and threatened to be killed, her family threatened to be killed if she said anything, so we kept pushing,” O'Neal said.
They said Smart hasn't reached out to them for years but being mentioned in her book puts a smile on their faces.
"I think it's a really nice compliment to us," Quezada said.
"I'm flattered by it, as I know the other officers are, that she would even remember us or even certain things we had done," O'Neal said.
"My Story" will be available to the public and on book shelves on Monday, Oct. 7.
