SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – 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.'”