- I'm Craig Melvin,
and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
She was young, worked hard,
and loved adventure.
One moment, she had her whole life in front of her.
The next-- - It's a gun.
- Yeah. - At your neck.
- Abducted by strangers.
- He said, "Don't move. "Don't scream."
- This U.S. citizen, taken deep
into the wilderness, chained to a tree,
told there might be worse in store.
Her family, out of their mind with worry.
- I-I couldn't believe it.
- The American Embassy leaping into action.
- This is gonna be a long process.
It's not gonna be solved overnight.
- But could she do anything to save herself?
With a surprising tool,
she set in motion a daring plan.
- So you would unlock the lock while nobody was guarding you?
- Then one night in the darkness...
- And, like, I start seeing some flashlights.
- ...was the nightmare over or about to start all over again?
**
Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
All of us have a survival instinct
that kicks in when we need it most,
in a life or death situation.
That was the case for one young American
abducted in a remote corner of Ecuador.
As investigators raced to save her,
she was plotting to save herself.
Her plan would take courage
and something secret hidden in her bag.
Here's Kate Snow with...
- A young woman held captive in the South American jungle,
chained to a tree, hundreds of miles from her family.
- She's such a good woman, and--
[sighs] You feel really angry.
You're like-- You don't know what to do.
- Kidnappers had targeted her for a reason.
They thought an American family would pay up.
How big an alarm bell goes off
when an American is being held hostage?
- The U.S. Government starts moving
when an American is held hostage.
- She was only 24,
but Elisa Levy lived to tell about an ordeal
worse than most of us could ever imagine--
weeks of isolation, pain, and fear.
- I didn't want to die.
I-I really want to try to do something about it.
- This is a story of strength,
stamina, and survival,
how one young woman rose to a harrowing challenge.
Elisa used every ounce of determination
and creativity she had.
She was willing to do anything, everything she could,
to keep her family and herself alive.
In a sense,
Elisa Levy comes from two different worlds.
Her father, James Levy, is an American,
born and raised on Long Island,
just a few miles from New York City.
Her mother, Alicia Ortiz, was an Ecuadorian school teacher.
The two fell in love
when James was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s,
and they married soon after.
- I had no idea that I would marry a Gringo.
- Their four children
are all dual citizens of the U.S. and Ecuador.
- I had always thought that it would be better
to bring the kids to the States
and bring 'em up in the States.
- But this American dad found his family adored
the rural, peaceful life in South America.
James and his wife built a home
in the clearing of the Ecuadorian jungle,
just over the border from Colombia.
They started an environmental group, Altropico,
to protect the endangered rain forest all around them.
Elisa, their eldest daughter,
loved her life in the wilderness.
- Tell me about Elisa.
- A beautiful, strong, young woman. Very intelligent.
- Elisa's little brother and sister, Eddie and Murriah.
- Since we were little, she was always, like, taking care of us.
- She was protective. - Yeah. - Yeah.
- Elisa had a strong, adventurous streak,
always ready to find a new species of bird,
explore a new patch of land.
Her mother admired Elisa's spirit,
but kept a watchful eye.
- Children are a mother's life. - Yeah, you always want
to protect your little girl, right?
- That's what mothers do. - Si.
- Still, her mother was eager for Elisa to see the world,
especially America.
As a teenager, Elisa lived with family on Long Island,
worked at Applebee's and Dunkin' Donuts.
When she returned to Ecuador,
she enrolled in Catholic University,
in the capital city Quito,
where she studied botany and biology,
and this became her passion, the school bicycle club.
She organized weekly races in the narrow streets of Quito,
took long bike trips through the countryside.
Elisa's other passion was Altropico,
the environmental foundation started by her dad.
After college, she volunteered there,
taking school kids into the jungle,
teaching them to identify
Ecuador's hundreds of species of birds.
Elisa's volunteer work with Altropico
took her from Quito to the place where she grew up,
the north of Ecuador, near the Colombia border.
The area's lush forests
are home to a wide variety of tropical plants and birds,
but they can also be a habitat for criminals.
[gunfire]
[explosions]
- Unfortunately, there is some serious crime issues here.
- Fernando Matus, born and raised in the Bronx,
works for the U.S. State Department.
At the time, he was the Regional Security Officer in Ecuador,
the top American law enforcement agent in the country.
- The northern border is a--
an area that has a lot of security challenges.
- Outlaw paramilitary organizations in Colombia
traffic in drugs and contraband
and often use rural villages
on the Ecuador side of the border to refuel.
In 2009, the best-known group was called the FARC,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
They held French politician Ingrid Betancourt hostage
in the jungle for six years.
But when you grow up somewhere,
you don't necessarily see it the way outsiders do.
- The area where you were working
has maybe a bad reputation... - Yeah.
- ...for being dangerous, but you never felt
in any danger. - Not at all. No.
- That's why Elisa wasn't suspicious
when a man from her hometown area called one day
saying he was an official who wanted to start a bird project
in another town near the Colombia border.
- Do you remember how you felt about that phone call?
Was it odd? Was it normal? - No, it was normal.
- She told him she'd be in the area soon,
and she'd meet up with him
if he sent a driver to pick her up.
Saturday, October 17, 2009.
One of Elisa's brothers dropped her off
with the driver of an Isuzu Trooper,
who was supposed to take her to the meeting.
- You pull up with your brother. - Mm-hmm.
- You see the blue Trooper. - Mm-hmm.
- You get out and get right in? - Yeah.
- Still, as she drove off, she had her brother write down
the Trooper's license plate number just in case.
At first, things seemed fine.
The driver was calm and friendly,
but about an hour into the trip,
he picked up two strangers who said they needed a ride,
but that's not what they wanted.
- He just points me with something here,
and says, "Don't move. Don't scream.
"Shut up. Don't do anything." - It's a gun.
- Yeah. - At your neck?
- Yeah.
- Who had abducted Elisa and why?
Elisa's family receives a chilling phone call.
Her parents wonder what they can possibly do
to bring her home
- Saturday, October 17, 2009.
Elisa Levy, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen,
was in the back of an S.U.V,
hurtling down dirt roads in remote Ecuador
with a gun to her neck.
But her family back in Quito didn't know a thing about it.
The last they'd heard from her,
she was off to a meeting about tropical birds.
When she didn't return to the city as scheduled or call,
they started to worry.
- We thought it was an accident or something like that happened.
- Or a mud slide. She couldn't get out of the town.
- A mud slide? - Yeah, it's very common
in the rural areas here. - Yeah. Right.
- You know, you don't think the worst.
- Elisa's father, James, was in San Francisco
at an environmental conference.
The family didn't want to worry him,
but after two days, they sent a panicked email.
- Would Elisa ever do that?
Would she go away for two days without calling?
- No. Never. - His first thought--
That border region where Altropico does its work,
where his daughter was headed for that meeting.
- The area that we work in is kind of complicated.
There's all kinds of things going on there.
- Complicated? - Yeah.
- On Monday, October 19, two days after Elisa disappeared,
her mom got a phone call from a stranger.
- He told me, "Don't worry. Elisa is okay.
"We have her in Colombia."
The caller told her in no uncertain terms
Elisa had been kidnapped.
- I said, "Why are you doing this to us?"
And the line cut. - What-what is going
through your head then?
- It made me feel horrible,
and I threw the phone against the wall.
- I just said, "What?" I-I couldn't believe it,
because, you know, it's not something that usually happens.
- Had you ever worried about her much?
Or was she so independent and adventurous
that you sort of thought, well, Elisa can take care of herself?
- I think that's one of the big mistakes I made, you know?
That, uh, to work in this area that's such a complicated area
for so many years and doing positive work
with so many different communities
on both sides of the border that--
that everyone's, like, on our side.
It was kind of an innocent, stupid way to look at things.
- Elisa's father got on the next plane back to Ecuador.
It was time to take action.
- My first reaction was to try to deal with this on our own.
- The biggest question the family faced now
was one that wouldn't even occur to most Americans.
Did it make sense to call in law enforcement?
In Ecuador, many people don't trust the police.
Even with a crime as serious as kidnapping,
some Ecuadorians try to solve the problems themselves,
but there is another option.
The Ecuadorian police have an elite anti-kidnapping unit
known as UNASE.
100 special agents trained to track kidnappers,
help families through the harrowing process
of negotiating a ransom, and also whenever possible,
launch rescue raids.
- We realized that we couldn't do it by ourselves.
I mean, we need help.
- With no other good choices, the Levys called Unase.
[speaking Spanish]
- Call me Pepe.
- Pepe, that's the pseudonym he goes by,
was the top Unase agent assigned to Elisa's case.
He asked us to hide his identity
because he works undercover.
[speaking Spanish]
- We have 40 or 45 kidnappings annually,
but we've got it under control.
- 40 to 45 a year?
- Yes.
- But this case was different.
The victim was a US citizen.
Pepe advised the Levys to contact the American Embassy
in Quito.
When James made the call, he was put through
to the top US security official in Ecuador, Fernando Matus.
How big an alarm bell goes off
when an American is being held hostage?
- The US government starts moving
when an American is held hostage, definitely.
- Quickly. - Yeah.
It's not unheard of for Americans to be kidnapped
in Ecuador, but usually they're quick jobs.
A tourist in a taxi held for a few hours,
forced to withdraw cash from ATMs.
This case seemed far worse.
- God forbid that this is somehow associated
with the FARC up in Colombia.
And the victim was going to be taken into a jungle
and spend five years in there.
- Like Betancourt. - Exactly.
- Wednesday morning, October 21st,
four days into Elisa's kidnapping,
agents of the state department, the FBI, and Unase
arrived at the Levy home.
- So we had to get them prepared mentally that, look,
this is gonna be a long process.
It's not gonna be solved overnight.
- The authorities told the Levys
they would send out investigators to try
and track down Elisa's captors,
but the most crucial work in solving an abduction
is communicating with the kidnappers themselves.
The ringleader had left a phone number with Elisa's mom.
Who would make that call?
The agents decided James Levy,
who now goes by his Spanish name, Jaime,
had the temperament to take on the delicate task.
- Jaime seemed to be able to handle it.
- It's an incredibly difficult thing to do,
to talk to the kidnappers of your own child.
- Definitely.
- But the US and Ecuadorian agents
were prepared to help.
They brought sample scripts, telling Jaime
what he might expect his daughter's captors to say
and what he should say in return.
After a coaching session, he made the call,
recorded by Unase.
- Si.
- The call lasted four and a half minutes,
the longest four and a half minutes
of Jaime Levy's life.
Were they angry with you? Were they polite with you?
What were they like on the phone?
- Tough, angry.
Threatening.
- To keep himself from breaking down,
Jaime avoided eye contact with his wife.
- I had to ask Alicia to go out of the room.
It was difficult.
Very difficult. You can imagine.
- So you didn't cry, did you?
Not during the phone call. - No, not during the phone call.
- But that evening, when the agents filed
out of the house, Jaime Levy sat in his study
with a bottle of whiskey and wept.
- While the kidnappers seemed to toy with Elisa's family,
they are not playing games with their hostage.
- The guards were saying, like,
"Don't you ever think of screaming,
"'cause we'll kill you."
**
- Four days had passed, and Elisa Levy's family
in Quito was working feverishly for her release,
bringing in law enforcement agents
and opening phone negotiations with the kidnappers.
Less than 200 miles away, but many worlds apart,
Elisa was in a remote corner of Ecuador.
She couldn't know her family was fighting to free her.
She only knew that the past four days
had been the most painful, disorienting,
terrifying, of her life.
When those strangers had first jumped in the SUV,
put a gun to her neck, she wasn't even sure
what was real.
- I just didn't know what was going on.
I was-- I was thinking I-- I don't know, like,
we have a car accident and I hit my head
and I'm dreaming or something, or...
- You're dreaming. - Yeah.
- But it was a nightmare Elisa couldn't escape.
The man with the gun spoke to her directly.
- He said, like, "Don't move. Don't scream.
"If you help, nothing's gonna happen to you."
- Elisa didn't say a word or move a muscle.
Two men pushed her into the well of the vehicle
and threw a blanket over her head.
- They put handcuffs, and put me--
something in the mouth, and put me in the--
- Something in your mouth. - Yeah.
- Like a gag? - Yeah, something like that.
- Elisa was driven for more than an hour
along bumpy, rural roads.
Then the Trooper came to a sudden stop.
The door opened.
She heard someone approaching.
- This guy that touches my knee and says,
"If you collaborate, everything's going to be fine.
"Behave and come with us."
Elisa realized she recognized his voice.
It was the same man who had been calling
to arrange a meeting with her about the bird project.
- There was something really messed up going on.
- Her captors dragged her from the vehicle.
It dawned on her they were taking her
somewhere isolated, more dangerous.
- We start walking through some woods,
and the guys were talking, like, "Yeah, be quiet."
[indistinct whispering]
You know, like, whispering, and saying like,
"Don't you ever think of screaming,
"because we'll kill you."
- From her first moments in captivity,
Elisa was determined to stay calm and alert.
She knew one wrong move could cost her, her life.
Did you think about screaming?
- No, no, because, you know-- no, I didn't.
That would have been a stupid thing at that time.
- When the kidnappers finally removed the blanket
from Elisa's head, she saw they were heavily armed
and wearing ski masks.
They claimed they were guerillas
from a paramilitary group.
And Elisa's ordeal was about to get even worse.
Her captors told her she wasn't the only one in danger.
They threatened her parents and siblings back in Quito.
- We have a lot of people around your house,
so if you try to escape or something,
it's gonna be just, you know, don't even think about it.
- They convinced you that they had people
all around your family as well.
- Yeah, I mean, and I didn't even want to think
if it was true or false. - You can't take that chance.
- No. Exactly.
- The strangers asked Elisa if she had a GPS chip
under her skin.
That may sound odd, but in Latin America,
the ultra rich sometimes implant tracking devices
so they can find family members
in the event of a kidnapping.
- I mean, what-- who do you think I am?
It's not like I'm a millionaire.
- When they asked that, did you-- did it occur to you
that maybe they thought you had a lot of money?
- Yeah, and I told them, like, I don't know what you think,
but we don't have a lot of money.
- But the kidnappers weren't convinced.
They told Elisa they were sure she had money.
After all, she was a US citizen
with an American father.
- He said, "No, we've-- we've been tracking your family
"for twelve years and we know everything.
"We can do all your activities and everything."
- One of the armed men ordered her to send a message
to her parents.
She made a quick recording into the stranger's cell phone,
repeating the words he told her to say.
- Just say, "Mom and Dad, I'm fine.
"Just do whatever they say, and don't--
"Don't talk to the police."
I didn't want them to worry about it.
Just try to, you know, somehow, to let them know
that I was fine.
- You're not fine. - Yeah, but,
you know, if I would be crying in the message,
my mom would just break down,
so I was trying to sound that I was fine.
- The kidnappers rifled through Elisa's backpack.
They took her cell phone, her watch, her iPod,
but they left her with a change of clothes
and some books, and something else
that she'd remember much later.
A few loose hairpins down at the bottom of her bag.
She spent that first night in a tiny makeshift tent,
handcuffed to a tree and watched over
by two guards with guns.
Elisa knew she had to stay centered,
keep from breaking down.
She focused her mind on her hometown.
- Thinking about my childhood, thinking about my family,
all the nice things I have done,
I was just all the time trying to remember things like that.
- To keep yourself positive. - Yeah.
And then when these people came to talk to me,
I was like--
You know, back to the reality.
- Reality hit hard the next morning.
Sunday, October 18th.
- They put me, a chain on my feet.
- They put a chain around your legs.
- Yeah. - Around your ankles?
- My ankles, yes. - And what was that chained to?
- To a tree that was right by the door of the tent.
- Alone, chained to a tree, Elisa Levy didn't know
if anyone even realized she was missing
or if her family had been harmed.
She had no idea what would come next.
- Did you think you would survive?
- I didn't want to thought about that.
- The frantic father negotiates for his daughter's life.
**
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
Elisa Levy was being held captive
by mysterious men at a secret location,
and her situation had the potential
to turn deadly at any second.
Meanwhile, her family was anxiously awaiting
the kidnapper's ransom demands.
Soon, Elisa's parents would risk everything
to save their daughter's life.
Back to Kate Snow with "Kidnapped."
- Jaime Levy, an American living in Ecuador,
was negotiating for his daughter's release.
His little girl was somewhere out in the jungle,
kidnapped by dangerous criminals.
Jaime was feeling betrayed by the country
where he made his home.
Did you ever in the back of your mind,
did you ever think about kidnapping as a possibility?
- I'd thought about it a little bit,
but we don't make any money.
But t-that's the impression people have
if you're an American, a gringo,
you're probably a millionaire.
- Less than a week into Elisa's captivity,
in a phone call recorded by law enforcement agents,
the kidnappers' ringleader put a price on her life.
One million U.S. dollars.
That's a lot of money. - Mm-hmm.
- Possible for this family? - Not possible, not possible.
- Following instructions from the law enforcement experts,
Jaime told the ringleader
he wouldn't consider paying the ransom
until he knew for sure that Elisa was alive.
Kidnapping experts call it proof of life.
Even though Elisa's captors forced her
to record a message early on,
they had never actually sent it to her family.
No pictures, no talking to Elisa?
- No.
- So Jaime asked the ringleader questions
only his daughter could answer,
the name of her grandmother and her godfather.
And when you got the right answers back on the line,
what was that feeling?
- At least we knew she was alive.
- The Levys knew they needed
to come up with cash for the kidnappers.
How much money were you prepared to send them?
- The only thing we really have is this house,
so the bank offered us an $80,000 loan on the house.
- $80,000 is less than 10% of the $1 million
the kidnappers wanted.
In desperation, Jaime called his family
back in New York.
- My brother was going to cash in his retirement plan,
and my other sister was going to do that also.
- They were willing to do that for you?
- Yeah.
And we were gonna sell the house and pay them back.
- I guess you would do whatever you had to do at that point.
- Of course. Of course, everything.
- Jaime would talk to the ringleader
every day or two, negotiating the ransom.
Jaime offered $80,000.
The ringleader said it had to be closer
to that million dollar mark.
Jaime said he couldn't possibly raise
more than $150,000.
Basically they were haggling
over the price of his daughter's life.
Making the negotiations even more tense,
again and again the ringleader issued
a dire warning, don't call the police.
- It was a lie, of course.
Even as he spoke, Jaime was surrounded
by an FBI agent, a State Department official,
and a top operative of UNASE,
the Ecuadorian anti-kidnapping police.
- In reality, law enforcement agents
were on the hunt for Elisa's kidnappers,
identifying and surveilling known criminals
in the area who could be suspects.
- We were able to undertake
basic intelligence operations,
stake-outs, and investigations.
- But in a kidnapping investigation,
Pepe told us, time is never on his side.
Communications from the ringleader
were getting shorter, sharper.
Things turned a little bit.
The kidnappers started getting anxious.
- You could tell that they weren't getting
the results that they wanted.
- The tension inside the Levy home was palpable.
So was the pain.
Little sister Maria found an old stuffed animal of Elisa's
in the room they used to share as kids.
- I used to talk to my sister when I was--
When I was going to sleep,
I used to hug a teddy bear that was hers.
- Do you think she could hear you?
- I don't know. It's like, energy is so powerful.
Maybe it's like, when you are connected
and you feel it so much.
I mean, I used to close my eyes and imagine her.
And we all said, "she's fine, she's fine."
- The whole family was doing all they could
to send positive energy to Elisa.
What would you say?
- That we love her very much,
that her family was thinking about her.
She is a strong woman who can handle a situation like this.
- Of course, the Levy family had no idea
what Elisa had been through over the past four days
or what she had yet to endure.
- Elisa's kidnappers up the ante.
- This guy said, "we might cut a finger off," so...
- "Cut your finger off"? - Yeah.
**
- October 31st, 2009,
two weeks into Elisa Levy's captivity,
the 24-year-old U.S. citizen
was still chained to a tree in the Ecuadorian jungle.
Exhausted, unable to move more than a few feet,
her body aching from the confinement,
she was struggling to remain strong.
But fighting off her fears was growing more difficult.
From the moment she disappeared,
her family back in Quito were sending mental messages of hope.
And as she sat alone for hours on end,
Elisa almost felt she could hear her mother's voice.
- I don't know if it's-- if it was me,
or because I was desperate or whatever,
but I really could talk to her, especially at night.
And I felt a lot of, like, energy, you know?
- Coming back at you. - Yeah, like, a lot.
- Did you hear your mother? What did she say?
- "I miss you." Yeah.
- She drew comfort from those imagined whispers
in the dark at night,
and although she'd never been very religious,
she started to pray.
- I would pray every night,
you know, the couple things I know.
I felt people pray with me.
I don't know how to explain it,
but I just wasn't able to feel sad anymore.
Like, uh, whew,
I was just like, you know, like, calm.
- The two guards watching over her
were the only human contact she had.
Their boss, the ringleader,
came and went from a ramshackle hut
about 50 yards from her tent,
but Elisa never saw him.
She came to think of her guards
as the good guy who would bring her rice and beans,
reassure her she'd soon be released,
and the bad guy
who often threatened to kill her
or her family back home.
But she never learned their names.
She was determined not to become overly attached to her captors.
She'd been fiercely independent
and comfortable in the wilderness
from the time she was a little girl.
Now she used those qualities to keep her mind occupied.
She gazed up into the trees for hours,
trying to identify birds by their songs and their colors.
- It actually was a really nice forest,
you know, with a lot of birds and things to see.
- In the daylight,
the one novel she brought with her
was always open, a Colombian love story.
- I read that book, like, I guess 12 times or even more.
- Over and over again. - Yeah.
- But then night would come again.
The chains around her ankles made it impossible to sleep
for more than an hour or two at a time,
and every noise in the trees
seemed like it could signal a new danger.
Lying awake,
she'd imagine herself soaring on her bicycle.
And she would dream about a big bike trip
she was organizing to raise money for conservation
in just a couple of months.
- I didn't want to miss the-- you know, this bike trip
across South America that we were planning.
'Cause that's what I want to do.
- She cried alone.
Not once did she let her captors see that.
She didn't want to show weakness,
especially to the guard she called the bad guy.
He treated her roughly and issued dark threats.
- "We might just sell you to a different group."
- A bigger group. - Yeah.
- A more scary group. - Yeah.
I had no idea they did that with people, but...
- Elisa understood his warning.
Her current captors could sell her to the FARC,
an even more brutal guerilla group
with an expertise in holding hostages.
It took extraordinary willpower,
but Elisa forced herself to push aside her fears.
- I'm all by myself, you know?
I get sad when I start thinking about this
all over again.
It's gonna be-- it's not gonna be good for me,
so I better not-- I better be positive, or...
- Elisa was making a conscious effort
to cultivate the guard she called the good guy.
It was starting to work.
Her spoke to her more often at mealtime.
He even brought her yarn.
- So I started doing a scarf.
- Wait, you had knitting needles with you?
- No, he brought knitting needles.
- Did you ever think of using those knitting needles
for anything else?
- I was really afraid of-- like, from the beginning,
I just had that idea if I did something,
my family could, you know, be hurt,
so I didn't even thought about that.
- The needles would be no match against guns,
but Elisa thought of a way to use them.
She knitted four scarves for the good guard,
and in exchange she asked him for information.
He gave her a key nugget.
Her parents were alive, he told her,
and negotiating her release.
- He was like, "they're talking. Everything's gonna be fine.
Just calm down."
- But the guard she calls the bad guy
was escalating his threats.
- This guy said, "we might cut you--
a finger off, so--" to pressure--
- Cut your finger off? - Yes.
- Of course, Elisa didn't know
about the U.S. and Ecuadorian agencies
on the hunt for her captors.
Now the Colombian government had joined the effort, too.
- The law enforcement authorities in Colombia
who focus on anti-kidnapping matters
worked closely with the Ecuadorian national police,
the UNASE.
- Zeroing in and... - Exactly.
- Encircling the net.
- If anybody has experience in kidnapping matters,
it's the Colombian authorities.
- Some of the specifics are classified,
but the Colombians provided high tech equipment
to help the team track the location
of the ringleader's cell phones.
There was no way to know
if he was in the same place as Elisa,
but the kidnappers were leaving behind other clues, too.
- We like to say there's no such thing
as the perfect crime.
They always leave a trace.
- And it was Elisa herself
who gave them their best clue.
Remember, when she first climbed into that Isuzu Trooper,
she'd asked one of her brothers
to make note of the license plate number.
Investigators checked the number against video
of vehicles passing through toll plazas
all over Ecuador.
The kidnapper's Trooper was recorded
passing through several toll booths
and heading to the Colombia border.
But 18 days into her captivity,
out in her makeshift tent in a remote patch of forest,
Elisa Levy wasn't sitting around
waiting to be rescued.
- I didn't wanna die.
Uh, I didn't wanna keep thinking
that my family is thinking that I'm dead.
I really wanted to try to do something about it.
- There were stretches of time
when the two armed guards would wander off.
The only thing holding Elisa in the kidnappers' encampment
was that chain binding her ankles to a tree.
- And the chain, I assume, has a big lock on it.
- Actually, it had, like, a small lock.
- The knitting needles were too large to pick that lock.
Was there another way?
She'd thought about it 100 times,
but now desperation sparked creativity.
- Remember, her captors had taken her electronics,
but not her backpack and those bobby pins
mixed in with loose change at the bottom.
She reached in and pulled out two,
and bent them into tools.
Over the next three days,
whenever the guards were out of sight,
she'd maneuver the pins in the lock's keyhole.
She tried again and again.
Finally, the lock popped open.
But Elisa stayed cautious.
The bad guy seemed brutal enough to shoot
if she tried to escape.
- So what I did was I would try
and climb the trees that were nearby
and try to see where I was.
- So you would unlock the lock,
climb up in the trees and try to see where you were?
- Yeah. - All while nobody was
right close guarding you. - Right, yeah.
- And then go back, sit down, and put the lock back on?
- Yeah. - That's pretty brave.
- Yeah, I was really afraid that they may see me.
- With each climb, Elisa grew more bold.
Soon, she would have to decide
whether to run from her kidnappers.
She closed her eyes tight,
praying for guidance from her mother,
miles away in Quito.
- I-- you know, I heard this--
Or I had this communication, I don't know, like, with my mom.
- You heard your mother's voice?
- Yeah, well, I believe it was my mother's voice.
- And what did she say?
- Don't, like, risk yourself. Don't-don't try and escape.
Just wait a couple more days.
- But Elisa could also read the signals
she was getting from her guards, both spoken and silent.
She was running out of time.
- Coming up...
Suddenly, movement in the deep darkness of the jungle.
- And I start seeing some, like, like flashlights.
- But who was it? Rescuers or more danger?
- Friday, November 6th,
it had been 20 days since the Levy family
had seen or spoken to 24-year-old Elisa.
20 brutal days.
- I mean, I can't do anything. Just have to wait and wait.
- And how was your mom through all this?
- It was, like, really hard.
I mean, the police people told us
you have to be the support for your mother.
She's really suffering.
- She's a good mom, she's a protective mom.
- It's true.
- Saturday, November 7th, 2009,
Elisa awoke suddenly in the dead of night.
She heard rustling in the forest.
- And I start seeing some like, like, flashlights?
- In the beams of light slicing through the trees,
Elisa could only make out silhouettes.
There were many of them moving briskly
and carrying military-style weapons.
It occurred to Elisa in an instant
these were FARC rebels.
- It just went through my mind, like, really fast,
that I'll be years in Colombia with this group.
- The lights and shadows kept advancing
toward Elisa's flimsy tent.
- You think you're in trouble.
- Yeah, I was sure about that,
you know, that this was like a-a terrorist group
that was gonna take me to the middle of nowhere for years.
- And then, one of the armed men burst inside the tent.
- He goes around and holds me,
and he say, "It's okay, it's okay.
"You're gonna be fine." I was like, "No, please.
"Just don't take me."
And he's-he's saying, "We're-we're from the police
"We're from the police. We're rescuing you."
- Did you believe him?
- I-I was trying to, you know.
I was just hoping it wasn't a dream.
'Cause I had thought I might be dreaming.
- We covered Elisa with a blanket
and put ourselves on top of her,
so she could not be harmed again.
- The man cradling Elisa in a bulletproof blanket
was Pepe, the undercover agent
from the Ecuadorian Anti-Kidnapping Police, UNASE.
- He said, "It's okay, Elisa."
"I've been with Jaime, Elisa."
And when I just heard my parent's name, I was...
I was happy. [chuckling]
- She began to hug me,
and we told her what we always say
to those we've rescued.
Welcome to liberty.
- Alicia got the phone call.
I remember I was still in bed.
And she started screaming and everyone jumped up.
- We all screamed and clapped.
It was the best moment of my life.
- You feel you could just breathe again.
- She was safe, but was she really all right?
They would have to wait hours to find out.
The rescuers whisked Elisa back here to Quito.
She was desperate to see her family.
She hadn't even talked to them by phone.
But UNASE officials had a different idea.
They wanted to publicize their victory,
so that other families of kidnap victims
might feel more comfortable calling the police.
They wanted to televise the Levy family reunion
live on camera.
Elisa was taken to UNASE headquarters
to wait for a 1:00 PM press conference.
Officials would announce her rescue,
then finally allow her to see her parents, brother and sister.
- I-I can remember, like, every single minute of the waiting.
It was, like, a long, long, long, long time.
Even I could say that that was even longer
than the three weeks I was away.
- After a brief press conference,
the Levy's walked through the crush of cameras
and into Elisa's arms.
- It was a good feeling.
To know that our daughter was safe.
- I mean, ah, it was-- it was the best thing ever,
just, you know, being able to see them.
Um, and also, you know, to feel that they--
now that they're fine, that they know I'm fine.
It was all I needed. It's all I wanted,
just to be with family.
- In the end, her captors had been common criminals,
not guerilla fighters at all.
Elisa's testimony helped convict the ringleader
and the guard she called "the good guy,"
but the bad guy is still at large.
When we last spoke, Elisa told us
that since her kidnapping, she has thought of the U.S.
and South American agents who saved her everyday.
But she's tried to put
those terrifying 21 days behind her.
Still, she agreed to come with me to a reconstruction
of the place she was held,
created for us by the UNASE agents who rescued her.
- Is it-- what does it feel like to look at this now?
- Weird.
- Weird? - Yeah.
- Elisa still remembers every detail.
- Your leg was chained, right?
Your ankle was-- both ankles or just one?
- At the beginning, both, and then just one.
- What about going to the bathroom?
- I had to go as far as the chain would let me go.
- They wouldn't let you off the chain
to go to the bathroom? - No.
- When you look back now
and, as you stand here looking at this,
can you believe that you did 21 days
in something like that?
- Well, I-I think I haven't really
assimilated all this yet, you know?
The place itself, the view from there,
was a really nice forest.
And yes, some people might not like to be
in a forest for 21 days,
but I'd rather be there than in a small dark room.
- You're a very positive thinker.
- Well, my mind sort of just work like that
to go through all that. - To keep you
alive and sane. - Yeah.
- Yeah.
- During those days chained to a tree,
Elisa found strength dreaming of the freedom
she'd feel soaring on her bicycle.
And it may sound hard to believe,
but just eight weeks after coming home,
she left for that long-planned bike trip
through South America.
[cheering]
A 4,000 mile journey covered by the local press.
- I mean, it's been one of the greatest thing in my life,
the bike trip.
And it, yeah, after all that happened,
it was like a healing thing.
- She was, like, trying to retake her life,
not like sitting on her bed to cry
or stuff like that.
- She helped us to get through it.
- To get through it. - Yeah.
- She-she helped you to get through it.
- Yeah. - She did.
She was the support of all of us.
- I'm happy being alive and happy being with my family.
I'm really happy, you know,
being able to have a second chance.
I'm fine after all what happened
because I'm fine.
- That's all for this edition of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.