(Inspiring upbeat ethereal music) [Kate] It is a picture perfect day in Kamas, Utah.

So cold, you can see your breath.

So sunny, you have to squint to see the soaring landscape.

In this charming mountain town 40 miles east of Salt Lake City, I am meeting a woman of great courage, whose story is full of peaks and valleys.

[Kate] Hi Elizabeth!

[Elizabeth Smart] Hi.

[Kate] How are you?

[Elizabeth] Good, how are you?

[Kate] Twenty years after unthinkable horror, Elizabeth Smart is now married and a mother of three, and she is taking me to her all-time favorite restaurant.

A place she loves that makes her think of the best parts of her childhood.

It's here we enjoy one of Utah's best burgers.

[Kate] This burger, are you kidding me?

So, good.

And then, she's sharing her unwanted journey from trauma to healing.

From pain to purpose, Elizabeth's story is still being written, but it is one of grit, resilience, and overcoming; as she has become a fearless advocate for girls and women around the world.

[Elizabeth] I always felt that my desire to prove myself and now, I know I can do hard things.

I don't need to prove it to anyone.

[Kate] And then, she's sharing her plans to do more for survivors of sexual assault.

[Elizabeth] It made a difference to them and it honestly reminded me why I keep doing this.

(Uptempo rock music) [Kate] What's better in life than a bottle of wine, great food, and an amazing conversation?

My name is Kate Sullivan, and I am the host of To Dine For.

I'm a journalist, a foodie, a traveler, with an appetite for the stories of people who are hungry for more.

Dreamers, visionaries, artists, those who hustle hard in the direction they love.

I travel with them to their favorite restaurant to hear how they did it.

This show is a toast to them and their American Dream.

To Dine For with Kate Sullivan is made possible by... [Announcer] There are people in your life who count on you for what matters most.

American National agents are close to home and committed to our communities.

They'll help you find the right coverage for you, your family, even your farm and business.

You can learn more at americannational.com.

♪ ♪ Lavazza has worked towards perfecting the art of blending coffee for four generations, celebrating coffee in all its forms.

Lavazza Classico can be brewed however you take your coffee.

Lavazza.

Devoted to coffee since 1895.

[Kate] Hi everyone, today, I'm in Kamas, Utah on my way into the Hi Mountain Drug Store, known for delicious burgers and milkshakes.

I can't wait to eat here.

And I can't wait for you to meet a true visionary and one of the most inspiring women in this country: Elizabeth Smart.

[Kate] Hi Elizabeth!

[Elizabeth] Hi!

[Kate] How are you?

[Elizabeth] Good, how are you?

[Kate] It's so nice to meet you.

[Elizabeth] Nice to meet you.

[Kate] And this is Kamas, Utah.

[Elizabeth] This is Kamas, Utah, yeah.

[Kate] It's gorgeous.

It's so beautiful!

[Kate] Hi Mountain Drug Store is a throwback to a time and place gone by, a slice of Americana.

It's an old-fashioned burger joint fondly known to locals as "the drug store," and it sits right on Main Street in Kamas.

[Grady Pace] Originally, it started uh, as a confectionery, so a small like, soda shop, ice cream, candies, and with that came like, the "small-town druggist," right?

[Kate] More than 100 years later, it's still serving up classic dishes.

Burgers, fries, and milkshakes are the standouts here: Icons of American cuisine.

The restaurant was purchased by Grady Pace's grandparents in 1968 and it's been in the family ever since.

[Grady] It's kind of that same old time, people get together and sit around a table, do a puzzle, hangout, have conversation.

It's just this, kind of, great thing.

[Kate] The restaurant's nostalgia conjures memories of good times, simple times, and it's most evident in the food.

[Kate] So, you could have brought me anywhere in the Park City, Salt Lake City area for your favorite restaurant, but you chose Hi Mountain Drug Store.

Why?

[Elizabeth] I mean, there are plenty of incredible restaurants in Park City, in Salt Lake, um, but, Hi Mountain Drug just is a special place.

Um, I have so many happy memories connected to here.

I used to go horseback riding with my grandpa and my uncle, and we'd always stop here afterwards because we'd all be starving.

We come here and my kids refer to it as... "That little restaurant that we love."

(Kate laughs) It just, it builds up an emotional place in my heart, so... [Kate] Oh, that's wonderful.

[Elizabeth] Um, no it's not the fanciest, but I love it.

[Kate] Oh, and I love it for you.

This is wonderful.

Thank you.

[Elizabeth] And the food is amazing.

[Kate] And look at the size of the glass.

(laughs) So, really, nostalgia is what brought us, but more than that the food is really good.

[Elizabeth] So, yeah, it's nostalgia, but I'd put their burgers, I'd put their, their drinks, I'd put their shakes next to any other burger, shake, drink place in America.

Against anyone I've ever tasted.

[Kate] And what was it like being one of six, right?

What was it like being part of your family?

[Elizabeth] I have really happy memories of my childhood.

I mean, it was always a bit chaotic because there was a lot of us, and now as a mom of three, I think, "Wow, my mom had double this..." [Kate] (laughs) How did she do it?

[Elizabeth] What was she thinking?

[Kate] Oh, wow.

[Elizabeth] Oh.

Thank you.

[Kate] Is this the Gone Burger?

[Grady] It is.

[Kate] And this is the raspberry pretzel shake?

[Grady] Yes.

[Kate] This is your order.

[Elizabeth] Yeah.

[Kate] This is what you love.

[Elizabeth] Yeah.

[Kate] I cannot wait.

[Kate] The Gone Burger.

Cheddar cheese, bacon, onion rings on top of a juicy beef patty with smoky barbeque and fry sauce.

Fry sauce is a Utah staple, and it's mayo and ketchup combined.

Topped with a soft sesame bun and a side of hand-cut fries.

This is complimented by a raspberry pretzel jello shake.

Sweet, and a little bit savory.

A blend of fresh raspberries and crushed pretzel.

Oh, and those tall glasses on the table?

That's called a "fresh lime."

It's made to order with freshly squeezed lime juice mixed with simple syrup and soda water, served in mile high frosted glasses with a sugared rim.

[Kate] You're right, there's no easy way to eat this.

[Elizabeth] No.

[Kate] This is like barbeque, like a barbeque sandwich and a burger, with like crispy bacon all rolled into one.

[Elizabeth] Mm-hmm.

[Kate] I don't think I've ever had anything quite like this.

It's delicious.

[Elizabeth] You couldn't choose a bad burger here.

[Kate] No.

I want to get into your evolution as a person, right?

Because it's been a journey to say the least.

When you speak to schools, when you speak to groups, do you get tired of telling the same story?

[Elizabeth] It almost ebbs and flows.

Um, there have been times where it has felt, um, just almost like it wasn't my life anymore.

I don't know, if it's because I talked about it so many times, or, um, just a lot of time has passed.

[Kate] Yeah.

[Elizabeth] But then, as I continue on, like, um, in advocacy or like even when I'm going to the grocery store and someone approaches me and talks to me, and talks about how it affected them, and how they have dealt with something difficult as well, that almost, almost brings it back, makes it real again, and reminds me why I do it.

[Kate] June 5th, 2002.

It was a Wednesday night.

That a kidnapper made his way into Elizabeth's childhood home through an unlocked window and eventually into Elizabeth's bedroom.

She awoke to a man's voice and a knife against her throat.

Her life and her family's would never be the same.

[Kate] You were stolen from your childhood bedroom and the place that your, feel the safest, right?

At home.

Nine months in captivity.

What got you through those nine months?

If you had to pinpoint it.

Was it your faith?

Was it just sheer survival?

[Elizabeth] [Sighs] Ultimately, it would be a mixture of things.

I mean, I would say faith played a role in it.

I would say just sheer survival played a role in it.

I would say my, my family, knowing that they'd still be my family no matter what and that they'd still love me, that played a role in it.

I mean, I would say that it was really a combination of those three things.

[Kate] Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth grew up in a conservative Mormon family, where principles such as chastity and abstinence were paramount.

[Elizabeth] And then, after I was kidnapped and after I was raped, um, I dealt with a lot of shame.

I felt like, I was really filthy, I felt like, I was really dirty, that I was unworthy, that I wasn't as good as everyone else.

And um, I remember at one point really feeling that maybe it would be better to die then to survive and go back to my family with this, these, this filth, what I felt.

[Kate] And this is while you were in captivity, not after.

[Elizabeth] This is while I was in captivity, yeah.

And then, as I sat there, and I mean...I had a lot of time to think about it, but as I thought about it, I remember finally coming to the conclusion that of course, my parents will still love me.

Of course, my family will still love me.

Maybe nobody else, but they will.

And just getting home to them, that would be worth surviving for.

[Kate] Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and even a birthday passed without any sign of Elizabeth.

The odds of finding her were slipping away.

But at the beginning of spring in 2003, a stunning end to the brutality.

The horror she endured at the hands of her abductors was over.

Elizabeth, now 15-years-old, was found alive.

[Smart Family Member] A miracle that has been brought to us, that has been brought to our family.

Words cannot express how grateful we are.

[Elizabeth's Father] Elizabeth and Mary Katherine just hugged and were just bawling.

I mean, this was just a big hug, and uh, Elizabeth didn't want to let go.

[Kate] Police arrested the two kidnappers after witnesses spotted a suspicious man in town with a woman and a young girl wearing disguises.

Shortly after, Elizabeth was reunited with her family.

In 2011, one of her kidnappers was sentenced to life in prison, the other was sentenced to 15 years.

[Elizabeth] And so, I think for me probably the hardest thing about, uh, after I was rescued was coming to realize that I could never go back.

I could never go back and be the girl that I had been before I was kidnapped.

No matter how much I wanted to, that life was over.

And so... [Kate] You were on a new road.

You were on a new path.

[Elizabeth] Yes.

Honestly, my childhood was over.

And so, I could fight it and be angry or I could just accept it as best I can and move on.

[Kate] Elizabeth survived the unsurvivable: Becoming an advocate for victims of sexual assault and launching a revolutionary movement to change the stigma of how victims of assault are perceived.

She now travels the country helping others with their healing process.

She says she wasn't going to sacrifice her future for a past she could not change, wisdom she now shares with other survivors.

[Elizabeth] These kinds of life altering events, there's, there's no going back.

You can only go forward.

But helping them to know that, that is possible, that you can go forward and that just because your new life is different, doesn't mean that it is worse.

It could be completely better.

Or maybe it's just different, maybe it's just not what you expected, but that doesn't mean that it's bad.

And so, trying to help them uh, gain a hope for the future, and realize that ultimately they get to decide who they are.

It doesn't have to be the events or the things that have happened to them in their lives deciding who they are, and trying to help empower them to realize how incredible they are, how worthwhile they are, and that nobody has the right to hurt them.

And that they can do something about it.

[Kate] And that isn't something you learned in one year, two years, three years, that is, that has taken you, I mean here we are, the twentieth year of, the anniversary of your abduction, about to be the twentieth of your rescue, how long did it take you before you felt that in your bones?

[Elizabeth] So, I felt like I am constantly learning, and that is the case for so many survivors, um, that they never get to see justice.

Or I mean, I don't think that you ever see justice when it comes to crimes of sexual violence, or kidnapping, I, there is no justice.

You don't ever get back what was taken from you.

[Kate] Just months after Elizabeth was found, she was instrumental in pressuring Congress to change how agencies search for abducted children, including the National Amber Alert in 2003.

Now 35, Elizabeth has transformed her pain into purpose, devoting most of her time to advocacy work and starting The Elizabeth Smart Foundation in 2011.

Since then, Elizabeth has joined forces with the Malouf Foundation.

The two organizations galvanizing the work of helping survivors of rape and assault.

[Kate] What prompted you to take such a big, bold move in starting your own foundation?

[Elizabeth] Well, it was right after the trial had taken place and I actually was reached out to by Diane Von Furstenburg and she said, That she wanted to honor me, and she wanted to um, make a donation that I could choose to give away or I could build my own foundation or I could do something with it as long as it was supporting the work that I was already actively involved in.

So, my dad and I talked, and we talked about maybe giving it away and ultimately, we decided that we should build our own foundation, and that we should do exactly what we felt needed to be done.

[Kate] And what did you feel like needed to be done with that sort of windfall from Diane Von Furstenburg in the sense of what was possible based on your experience?

[Elizabeth] Growing up, I've never heard anyone openly talk about abuse, I've never openly heard anyone say, "I was raped."

I had never heard anyone say, like, "I was abused" or "I was hurt."

I never heard that.

And these crimes in and of themselves are so isolating and make you feel like no one else understands what you're going through and that you're just a lone island floating off in the middle of the ocean completely by yourself.

And I wanted to change that.

I wanted other survivors to know that they're not alone and then learning how common it really is, I mean whether you consciously know someone who has admitted to you that they've been raped or sexually abused or you don't, you do actually know someone.

(Ethereal music) [Kate] The statistics are alarming.

Every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted, and only five out of every one thousand rapists will end up in prison.

Studies show that a major reason that victims of sexual assault don't report the crime is fear, no one will believe them.

And because of that, more than two out of three sexual assaults go unreported.

[Kate] Let's talk about your podcast.

[Elizabeth] Okay.

[Kate] You know, Smart Talks, I think it's fantastic that you have started kind of developing these conversations beyond the work of the foundation.

Tell me a little bit about the podcast and what kind of conversations that you hope to have with it.

[Elizabeth] So, the idea for the podcast came about because I didn't feel like there was enough education out there that um, people still felt so isolated, they just didn't understand what it was, and honestly, a lot of my concern stemmed from when I was involved with the TV show, and on the TV show I was interviewing a couple of different survivors.

And they were talking to me about how, all three of them, they had been raped when they were in college.

And um, they didn't know what had happened to them at the time was rape.

Uh, because it was all someone that they knew.

Or someone that they were acquainted with.

Or someone that they were friends with.

Or someone that they were dating.

[Kate] Through her work at The Elizabeth Smart Foundation, she has added self-defense training programs for women and girls and started the "We Believe You" campaign to help guide survivors to share their stories.

She says that one of the first steps in recovery is for people to believe survivors.

[Elizabeth] Being believed and being safe, knowing that I had those two things made such a huge difference for my healing, and I think that if we could give that to other survivors, we would all be doing so much better.

[Kate] I'd like you to offer some advice to two people.

To someone who has recently been abused, what would you say to that person, and to someone who has just found out that their friend has been recently abused.

What would you say to that person to help them?

[Elizabeth] Okay.

Um, to the person who has just been abused, I would want them to know that they are special, that um, they are unique and wonderful, and have something to offer this world that nobody else does because they are unique.

Um, I would want them to know that there isn't anything that anyone else can do to them that can take away that value, that they were born with value and they will always maintain that value.

Nothing that anyone does to them can take that away from them.

And I want them to know that yes, this is part of your life, it might affect your life, it might affect the decisions that you make, however, it does not define who you are.

Ultimately, you get to decide who you are and you do that by the decisions that you make moving forward.

[Kate] You get to write your story.

[Elizabeth] Yes.

I would want the survivor to know that and to the friend of the survivor, if they have decided to share with you what's happened to them, take that as a sacred trust, because that is a big deal.

It is incredibly terrifying and scary to open yourself up to that level of vulnerability, to relive the worst moments of your life.

Um, so take it with the level of gravitas that it deserves and begin by believing them.

The first words out of your mouth should be, "I believe you."

[Kate] That's great.

That's really good advice, and I know that, that, what you just said, is going to help somebody so thank you for saying it.

There are so many people who, when something really bad or tragic or horrific happens to them, they just want to move on and forget it happened.

I think a part of you wanted to do that too, but you didn't, and the fact that you keep showing up in the midst of this story to help others, I find so personally inspiring.

And I'm just wondering, why?

Why didn't you just leave it in your rearview mirror?

What about you said, "I can't let this go, there's too many people out there who need me?"

[Elizabeth] Well, growing up there are specific members of my family that I very much looked up to and would always talk about the importance of service.

I mean, even at their funerals, I remember the congregation sang a song that was called "Have I Done Any Good In This World," and um, that always felt like it was really important to me, and initially when I got home, I didn't think that what I had to offer would make a difference or was that important.

And it's probably why I didn't immediately just start speaking out or doing advocacy.

And um, really it happened as I went along and began to meet other survivors and I listened to their stories and I listened to how they were treated or what they went through that I began to realize that maybe I did have something that could help and maybe I did have something that could help create change.

[Kate] What have you learned about yourself in the past 15 years, you know, as you have evolved with advocacy and that's really become, you know, what you're doing, and who you are.

But what have you learned post rescue and recovery that you didn't know about yourself?

[Elizabeth] Before, I always felt like that desire to prove myself, and now, I know, I can do hard things.

I don't need to prove it to anyone.

If I decide not to go into the ocean because it feels cold or something, this is a silly example, but if I decide, like, I don't want to go into the ocean and everyone else is like, "Come in, come in.

Stop being a baby!

I'm not a baby.

(Kate laughs) I don't need to go into the ocean.

I don't have anything to prove.

[Kate] Yeah.

[Elizabeth] I've already survived, like, pretty horrific circumstances for an extended period of time.

[Kate] Yeah.

[Elizabeth] Like, if it looks like I'm taking the easy way now, it's because I don't feel like I have to prove anything.

[Kate] And you don't, yeah, girl, you don't.

No, I love it, it's an inner knowing, it's a confidence.

And also, you do a lot.

You speak, and you're obviously, very uh, entrenched in The Elizabeth Smart Foundation and the Malouf Foundation, what part of the work that you do feels like most yourself?

[Elizabeth] When I see change happen, whether it's like, uh, a survivor finding a sliver of hope or it's legislation being passed, or it's the conclusion of helping to plan an educational summit and pulling it off, like...I think those are the moments that I'm like, yes, this is worth it.

(Inspiring, uplifting contemporary music) [Kate] I loved my time with Elizabeth Smart.

She picked a restaurant full of happy memories, a place that makes her feel safe.

In a way, she's still that quiet, reserved girl she was all those years ago.

And yet, as she says, "That girl doesn't exist anymore."

Instead, she has evolved into a powerful advocate for sexual abuse survivors.

She didn't pick this mission, but she didn't refuse the challenge.

She didn't back down from the difficult, emotional, and draining work of believing women, of supporting women when no one else will.

She knows the power of writing your own story.

That no matter what happens to you, there is always a way forward, a new path to go down, and there is beauty and value in your new path.

She knows this, because she's living it.

♪ ♪ [Kate] If you would like to know more about the guests, the restaurants, and the inspiring stories of success, please visit todinefortv.com or follow us on Facebook and Instagram at To Dine For TV.

We also have a podcast, To Dine For the podcast is available on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To Dine For with Kate Sullivan is made possible by... ♪ ♪ [Announcer] There are people in your life who count on you for what matters most.

American National agents are close to home and committed to our communities.

They'll help you find the right coverage for you, your family, even your farm and business.

You can learn more at americannational.com.

Lavazza has worked towards perfecting the art of blending coffee for four generations, celebrating coffee in all its forms.

Lavazza Classico can be brewed however you take your coffee.

Lavazza.

Devoted to coffee since 1895.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪