I’m not sure what this woman is doing now, but I hope this experience truly did put her on a journey to find God - but highly unlikely she’s gonna find Him in the Purpose Driven message.
No, she won't find him there.
Excerpt:
Here’s the lead: “Ashley Smith, who was held hostage in her apartment in March by the man now charged with murder in the Atlanta courthouse shootings, was hailed as a hero after she disclosed how she had persuaded her captor to surrender, partly by reading to him from the spiritual best seller The Purpose-Driven Life. But in a memoir released yesterday, Ms. Smith also recounts that she gave the kidnapper some of her supply of crystal methamphetamine during her captivity …”
Now there’s a combination — hostage soothes hostage-taker with spiritual wisdom and crystal meth — that few novelists would dare put on the page. Ashley Smith’s memoir, by the way, is called Unlikely Angel, and I would say that the crystal-meth part of the story is indeed unlikely. (Her hostage-taker first asked her if she had any pot, which she didn’t, but she did happen to have the crystal.) The book, by the way, is published by William Morrow/HarperCollins, the publisher of Freakonomics, but I hope you will agree that my discussion of said book is not unduly promotional.
The story did get me thinking a bit about crystal meth. Estimates of crystal meth use have been wildly divergent, with some law-enforcement agencies pronouncing it a massive scourge while other groups say the media is overblowing its prominence. So here’s the thing: The Purpose-Driven Life is one of the biggest-selling books in the past decade; Ashley Smith, a devotee of the book was also a devotee of crystal meth; might it be possible to conclude from this admittedly tiny (and unlikely) correlation that crystal meth is indeed a vastly popular drug? If only one-tenth the fans of Purpose-Driven Life are, like Ashley Smith, using crystal meth, that’s an awful lot of crystal meth.
...
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/the-crystal-methpurpose-driven-life-coefficient/
I was curious to see what happened to her after her 15 minutes of fame. Well, like ole Rick, she wrote a book.
According to Wikipedia
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During her ordeal, Smith read to Nichols from the Bible and from Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. She also cooked him pancakes and gave him crystal methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant, from her personal supply, although she maintains that she did not use the drug along with him. Smith later revealed “that she had been struggling with a methamphetamine addiction when she was taken hostage, and the drug problem had even led to time spent in a psychiatric hospital and the loss of custody of her 5-year-old daughter.”[3] Smith said the last time she used crystal meth “was 36 hours before Nichols held a gun to her and entered her home. Nichols wanted her to use the drug with him, but she refused.” Smith also revealed that she had “a five-inch scar down the center of her torso — the aftermath of a car wreck caused by drug-induced psychosis. She says she let go of the steering wheel when she heard a voice saying, ‘Let go and let God.’”[4]
(Of course she was TIED UP when she did all this and o curse SHE never used meth - LOL! Lies too.
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It was announced in June 2005 that Smith had inked a book deal with HarperCollins Publishers. She collaborated with writer Stacy Mattingly on her memoirs, Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero. The book came out in September 2005, and Smith revealed her methamphetamine addiction there for the first time. Smith asserts therein that her hostage ordeal awakened her to the fact that she was an addict, and she holds that she has infrequently used drugs since the ordeal.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Smith
I suppose “infrequently using an illegal drug that totally destroys you, is better than daily usage for a Rick Warren follower.
I wonder if she was ever charged for her drug possession and use? That might have helped her STOP using the junk.