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Ashley Hayes reporting You may remember the name MicKenzie Smith. Eyewitness News reported how the young girl escaped her kidnapper near a West Haven neighborhood last summer.
Now almost a year later the teen is receiving national attention.
MicKenzie describes this year as life changing -- from the trauma of being kidnapped, to escaping, to all sorts of attention. And it's not over yet.
MicKenzie Smith, Escaped Kidnapping: "I was just hitting and screaming....."
It's been almost a year since MicKenzie Smith originally told her story. A stranger approached her and her brother off a country road in West Haven. She was almost kidnapped when the man threw her in the back of his truck.
MicKenzie Smith, Escaped Kidnapping: "I'm so happy my story ended the way it did and I didn't end up dead."
Today the memories are still vivid.
MicKenzie Smith, Escaped Kidnapping: "I just kept feeling that something wasn't right."
Kaidan Smith, Witnessed kidnapping: "We tried to leave five to ten times but he kept on interrupting us and getting in the way."
MicKenzie Smith, Escaped Kidnapping: "I started hitting him and calling him names and just yelling at him. And about 100 yards up the road he stopped and yelled at me to get out."
MicKenzie's kidnapping ends there. Her captor, Damon Crist, let her go. He's in jail for a minimum of 10 years.
But MicKenzie's story is far from finished.
This month, the 13-year-old's escape is featured in "Sweet Sixteen" Magazine as a testimony to other teen girls.
MicKenzie Smith, Escaped Kidnapping: "Everybody can get away."
It's that fight, that message, that earned MicKenzie the national courage award from the Missing and Exploited Children's Center.
Laurie Smith, MicKenzie's Mother: "I'm really proud of her when I hear her talk about what happened. It's just amazing she was able to get away and think that fast."
So on Thursday, MicKenzie will stand in front of a different audience, traveling to Washington, DC for National Missing Children's Day. There she will be recognized for her courage at the US Department of Justice.
"I think it was a miracle...."
Because of MicKenzie, both her and her brother's schoolmates are learning more about keeping themselves safe.
Today Ken Wooden, founder of the organization "Child Lures Prevention", is speaking at their schools about different techniques kidnappers use to entice children. Wooden is a personal friend of MicKenzie's.
