Smith attracted extensive media attention in both countries as a "Goodwill Ambassador", becoming known as America's Youngest Ambassador and subsequently participating in peacemaking activities in Japan. With the assistance of her father Arthur (an academic), she wrote a book about her visit to the Soviet Union, "Journey to the Soviet Union", and later became a child actress, hosting a child-oriented special on the 1984 United States presidential election for The Disney Channel and playing a co-starring role in the television series "Lime Street", before her death at the age of thirteen on August 25, 1985 in the Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 plane crash.