Mother eager to spend time with son freed by Venezuela
SALT LAKE CITY—The 4:30 a.m. phone call that woke up Laurie and Jason Holt last Friday at their Salt Lake City home was the one they had been anxiously anticipating for two long years.
Their son, Josh Holt, and his Venezuelan wife were locked in a Caracas jail alongside some of the country’s most-hardened criminals—and President Nicolas Maduro’s top opponents—for what the U.S. government argued were bogus charges of stockpiling weapons.
The Utah parents had been through the emotional rollercoaster of believing their son would be released only to watch mediation efforts unravel at the last minute on at least three occasions. So they braced for another disappointment after an Associated Press reporter informed the couple Thursday that Sen. Bob Corker, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had popped up unexpectedly in Caracas to push for Holt’s freedom.
But then they got the fateful call from Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s office.
“They called us at 4:30 a.m. and said you need to be on the plane. Josh is coming home,” said Laurie Holt, recalling how they had to pack and get to the airport in 90 minutes. “This was the first time they actually said: ‘Get to DC, he’s being freed.’”
Now, Laurie Holt said she can’t wait to sit down with her son. While there was a long hug at the airport Saturday evening she said they’ve had very little time to speak to her son. The whole family was whisked away to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump before Josh Holt and his wife checked into a government hospital for a battery of medical tests.
Laurie Holt said her son is in good health but lost weight, suffered a number of bronchial problems in prison and has a rotten tooth that needed checking out. His wife, Thamara Caleno, has more serious pain issues on one side of her body.
Experts in treating people who have been held in captivity have debriefed the couple so that they can begin dealing with the emotions from their long ordeal.
“He’s not the same Josh that left,” said Laurie Holt. “He just doesn’t quite have that sparkle back yet in his eyes. He’ll come back, I know he will. We just have to give him time.”
On Monday, they were scheduled to be discharged and fly back to Salt Lake City, where they will be met by a welcoming committee that includes Caleno’s daughter from a previous relationship. Nathalia Carrasco, 7, has been living at Laurie Holt’s home since February but hasn’t yet been informed she’ll be reunited with her mother and Josh Holt, who she calls “papi.” Caleno’s other daughter, Marian, traveled with the couple from Caracas.
Laurie Holt said she’s thankful to Maduro, and believes he’s trying to do the best for Venezuela, even if she says there’s lots of things she doesn’t agree with.
“He didn’t have to let Josh go,” she said. “But I think his heart was softened.”
She thinks Maduro—fearing retaliation from the U.S.—decided to finally act after her son appeared in a clandestinely shot video from jail on the eve of this month’s presidential election railing against the Venezuelan government, saying his life had been threatened in a prison riot.
Maduro never publicly mentioned Holt’s imprisonment even as it became a major irritant.
She said she’s also appreciative of Corker’s Venezuelan counterpart in the talks, Rafael Lacava, a governor close to Maduro who escorted the Tennessee senator and Holt back to Washington on a jet belonging to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.