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From Hostage to Hero: Ashley Smith. Image from Zondervan

Editor's Update: In September 2005, a few months after this story ran in Today's Christian, Ashley Smith's book, Unlikely Angel, came out. In the book, Smith tells of the crisis she faced when suspected killer Brian Nichols held her captive. But she also tells of another crisis that almost killed her, one that started long before that day—her addiction to methamphetamines.

The addiction was so powerful that Smith failed to kick the habit despite several attempts at rehab. But from her recent media appearances it appears that at the time she didn't understand how bad her addiction was, she believed she was in control and that she could stop at any time.

On that fateful Saturday morning in March 2005, Nichols asked for marijuana and Smith offered him what she had—crystal meth. Knowing that the drug "made her crazy," she immediately realized the foolishness of offering it to a man who had allegedly murdered four people and who at that very moment was holding her hostage.

For the first time, Smith saw the futility, the depravity, and the hopelessness of her addiction. Though Nichols asked her to join him, she declined. "If I did die, I wasn't going to heaven and say, 'Oh, excuse me, God. Let me wipe my nose, because I just did some drugs before I got here,' " Smith told the media during her book tour.

Smith claims that was the moment of realization for her—the moment when God finally broke the stronghold of addiction in her life. She writes in her book: "I haven't touched drugs since walking out of my apartment on March 12. … Initially I did not volunteer the information about the drugs [that she gave Nichols]. … I was afraid. Later I came forward and shared the details about the drugs with the appropriate authorities, but I regret not having done so at the very beginning. I remember what Jesus said: The truth will set you free. That's how I want to live my life—I want to be an honest person and experience the freedom that goes with it."

Our original article revealed how God can use us regardless of our past. Ashley Smith's new and disturbing revelations show that even the most hopeless situation—being held hostage by a killer or a killer addiction—can be redeemed by God for His purposes and for our good. The initial version of the story showed how God used Ashley Smith to speak to Brian Nichols's heart and save innocent lives. The new revelations show how God used a divine encounter with Brian Nichols to save Ashley Smith's life.

Ashley Smith's record includes petty thefts, a DUI charge, and an arrest for battery (though the charges were later dropped). When I saw this unlikely heroine on TV, I marveled that her rough past had actually made it possible for her to save lives and bring a violent fugitive to justice.

At approximately 9 A.M. on Friday, March 11, Brian Nichols, a defendant in a rape and sodomy case in Atlanta, overpowered the deputy who was guarding him, stole her gun, and then allegedly shot the judge who presided over his case. Before fleeing the courthouse, he also shot the court recorder. On the street, a sheriff's deputy pursued him. In front of several witnesses, Nichols turned and shot the deputy five times. In less time than it takes to seat a jury, he killed three people in cold blood.

Nichols entered a downtown parking garage, and for the next half hour he became a serial carjacker, stealing a tow truck and two cars and pistol-whipping a local newspaper reporter, the owner of the second car, a green Honda Accord.

The local news stations interrupted programming for the rest of the day, devoting coverage to a manhunt for the killer in the Honda who was now terrorizing the city. I found myself glued to the television, deciding my errands could wait. I feared parking lots—they are prime carjacking locations in Atlanta.

I was relieved that my son's school had already planned an early dismissal. When I picked him up, I found the school was on restricted lockdown. Extra teachers were monitoring the carpool lines. As I waited in line, I listened to radio reports of false sightings of Nichols. He could be anywhere.

As I drove home, I studied cars and drivers.

I parked in the garage and closed the doors, not something I usually did. My husband called and said the streets near his office were closed and his building was on lockdown. The fear settled in my stomach. Constant broadcasts kept me fixated in front of the TV for the afternoon. Where could he be?

During the 11 P.M. news, reporters announced police had found the green Honda, but not Brian Nichols. The trail had grown cold. No one knew where Nichols was or how he was traveling. Had he carjacked someone else? Had he driven to another state? Was he hiding in plain sight?

I went to bed, and at 2 A.M. I awoke to the sound of my 10-year-old crying. A nightmare about Nichols had disrupted his sleep. He'd seen more of the television coverage than I realized. I let him crawl in bed with me.

The next morning I turned on the television. Two visitors to Atlanta had been mugged Friday night near a local mall. According to the police, the victims were sure the perpetrator was Nichols.

Police began to trace Nichols's movements through the night when they found another body. This time it was an Immigration and Customs agent. He had been working alone on his new house. The agent's gun and badge were missing, along with his blue truck. I worried about my son's baseball practice in a few hours. Where was Nichols? What would stop him?

There was little doubt that Nichols would go out in a blaze of gunfire. The only question remaining was how many would die along the way.

Brian's angel
Ashley Smith left her apartment around 2 A.M. Saturday. The 26-year-old waitress, student, and single mom moved into the apartment two days before and had spent the night unpacking. Out of cigarettes, she decided to run to the local convenience store. She returned home about five minutes later. Pulling into the space next to her apartment, she noticed that while she had been gone, a man wearing a baseball cap had moved his truck to the space behind hers. New to the apartment community and not yet familiar with her neighbors, she got out of her car. She heard the truck door slam as she hurried to unlock her apartment door. When she entered her apartment, Brian Nichols rushed in, too, holding a gun to her side.

Smith started screaming, but Nichols told her to shut up and then forced her into the bathroom. He told her to get into the bathtub. She did, and for the next seven hours Nichols held her hostage.

"Please don't hurt me," she begged. "I have a 5-year-old little girl. Please don't hurt me."

"I'm not going to hurt you if you just do what I say," Nichols responded, according to CNN's transcript of Smith's statement to reporters.

Smith listened and did everything he asked. But she also did more than that. Over the seven hours she was held hostage, she opened her heart to Nichols, telling him about her faith and her family. She told him about her daughter, Paige, who currently lived with an aunt. Smith was scheduled to see her later that morning.

"I told [Nichols] that if he hurt me, my little girl wouldn't have a mommy or a daddy," Smith told reporters. She told him how she worked two jobs and had just finished training to become a medical assistant. She shared how she was working to put her life back together after several rough breaks. In 2001, Smith's young husband was brutally stabbed during a parking-lot brawl as she helplessly looked on. He later died in her arms.

She asked Nichols about his family and tried to talk him into giving himself up. In time, Nichols realized he could trust Smith and removed the extension cord and masking tape that bound her.

Smith read him a Bible verse (Romans 12:5) and from Rick Warren's book The Purpose-Driven Life (Day 32, "Using What God Gave You"). Nichols told her he believed she was an "angel sent from God," and that God led him to her because he was lost. She told him that if he didn't turn himself in, "lots more people are going to get hurt. And you're probably going to die."

"I feel like I'm already dead," he told Smith, but she encouraged him to consider the fact that he was still alive a miracle.

"You're here in my apartment for some reason," she insisted, adding that he might be destined to be captured so he could spread the Word of God to his fellow prisoners.

The next morning, at 9:30, Nichols set Smith free to go pick up her daughter. Driving out of the apartment complex, she called 911 and informed police that he was in her apartment. Local police and SWAT teams surrounded the apartment, determined to take the suspect dead or alive.

But there was no blaze of gunfire. Nichols quietly waved a white T-shirt out the front door of the apartment around 11:30 A.M. and was taken into custody without incident.

Too much to swallow?
As the details of those seven hours came out, many began to question Smith's actions. While at her apartment, Nichols took a shower and Smith found him a fresh change of clothes. When he needed to get rid of the customs agent's truck, Smith followed him in her own car and brought him back to her apartment to keep him off the streets. Before she left, she made him breakfast—not cold cereal but, according to the transcripts, "real butter pancakes."

Was this another case of Stockholm syndrome, where hostages begin to identify with their captors? Did she know Nichols from before? Could God really have used her to change a cold-blooded killer's heart?

"A lot of people say, 'Well that's unbelievable,' but it shouldn't be," said Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, South Carolina. "God can use anybody."

Page, who formerly pastored in Augusta, Georgia, baptized Ashley in 1992. He was a frequent guest on news programs after the hostage story became public, because of his continuing friendship with Ashley. When I spoke with him on the phone, he said, "This was a God-directed scenario, a divine appointment. I don't believe that [Nichols] could have related to a Mother Teresa, pristine type of Christian."

Ashley has seen the worst life has to offer, Page told me. "Her life has taken so many twists and turns. She has had such difficulty, in growing up and in other ways, that she has not had the reactions that many others would have had if they had been confronted with some of the traumatic events that she experienced. Yet, she is not a bitter person. Those multiple hardships have brought her to the point where God could use her as a person who was not bitter."

He added, "I believe [Nichols] could relate to her, and because of her past life, she can feel comfortable interacting with people like him."

The heart of a servant
Ashley may have been comfortable with people like Brian Nichols, but the details of her past forced me to ask myself, Would I have been comfortable with someone like Ashley Smith?

While I am no Mother Teresa, I consider myself a decent person. I volunteer at church, help out in my community, and think of myself as a good mother. If I had met Ashley Smith as a waitress in the restaurant where she worked, would I have recognized her as a child of God? If I had seen her buying cigarettes at the corner 7-Eleven, would I have glimpsed the grace of God that was reassembling her broken life? Or would I have judged her as an unremarkable young woman with a dirty nicotine habit?

Chapter 32 of The Purpose-Driven Life begins with these words, "God deserves your best. He shaped you for a purpose, and he expects you to make the most of what you have been given." Ashley read this to Nichols. Pastor Page told me Ashley loves the Lord and over the past two years had been succeeding in putting her life together. She was beginning to find meaning in her life by serving others. Rather than selfishly clinging to her daughter at a time in her life when she could use the unconditional love of a child, Ashley served her daughter in the best way she knew how by putting Paige in the care of a trusted aunt. Ashley had finished her vocational training as a medical assistant and taken that second job as a waitress. The common theme between these two jobs? Service.

And now Ashley had a purpose. According to Pastor Page, she found it that March morning: "She told me, 'You know, when I realized this man wasn't going to hurt me, I just felt God fill me up. I knew at that moment that this was my purpose in life and that if I could relate to him, and calm him down, and get him to trust me, I could keep him from hurting anybody else.'"

What better picture of forgiveness could there be than to see a widow whose husband was murdered making pancakes for an alleged killer?

This raised new questions for me. If Ashley was an example of a faithful servant in action, what kind of a servant am I?

God was with Ashley throughout her troubled past. He had redeemed her good and bad experiences, and even her cigarette addiction, to prepare her for His purpose.

As Christians, we may look at our past failures and think, God could never use me. Ashley Smith's story will forever dispel that myth.

Jennifer A. Schuchmann is an Atlanta-based writer and the author of Your Unforgettable Life: Only You Can Choose the Legacy You Leave (Beacon Hill Press).

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