Smaker was a firefighter for six years in
California, during which time the
September 11 attacks occurred. In her desire to understand the attack, she left the United States about six months after the attacks at the age of 21, hitchhiked by herself through Afghanistan, and settled in
Sanaa,
Yemen. She spent five years in Yemen, learning Arabic, studying Islam, and teaching firefighting. All together she spent "over a decade living and working in the Middle East". Smaker also traveled in the Western hemisphere. When she was 23 years old, she was kidnapped for ten days by the
AUC, an anti-Marxist paramilitary group, while traveling from Panama to Colombia. The AUC was known for disemboweling and decapitating their victims in front of their families and burning villages to the ground to "send a message" to anyone thinking of cooperating with its Marxist enemies.1:46:43 Smaker survived the kidnapping "pretty unscathed", but left her shaken by "how normal these people were" (some of them teenage girls), and their ability to go from disemboweling human beings "to talking about makeup and their favorite football team".1:54:30 "It was unnerving to think that the people in the world who did the worst deeds were no different than me",1:53:10 and the experience sent her on a "trajectory" to try to understand "the other", "the evil doers" of the world, that led to the making of
The UnRedacted. Smaker has an MFA in
documentary film from
Stanford University. Among the awards her short films have won are Best Short Documentary at
SXSW and a Student Academy Award. ==Controversy over
Jihad Rehab==