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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After five years of searching and waiting, Kelsey Smith can finally put her husband to rest.

Smith's husband Jaxon disappeared on Dec. 2, 2007 when the SUV he was riding in plunged through thin ice about 100 km north of Yellowknife at Giauque Lake.

Last week, a search conducted by a retired couple from Idaho using sound waves, remote operated vehicles and divers, turned up a body 51 metres deep in the lake.

The NWT Coroner Service announced Wednesday that the drowning victim has been identified as 27-year-old Jaxon Smith.

"It's like the fog has been lifted," said Smith. "I can move on with my life and know that Jaxon has been found and there isn't any doubt anymore that he could be coming home alive."

On the day that he disappeared, Jaxon was out on the lake in a Toyota Land Cruiser with two men looking for wood to build a fishing hut. Smith said she had warned her husband that it was too early to be out on the ice and asked him not to go on it.

"He just kind of laughed at me and said 'sure,'" Smith remembered, adding he didn't listen.

Jaxon, who was in the backseat, was the only one that didn't escape from the vehicle after it plunged into the frigid lake.

At the time, he was working at the decommissioned Discovery Mine for Tyhee Development Corp., though he wasn't on the job during the incident.

Recovery efforts were made to find his body but with no success and in August 2008 police called off the search. This year, Smith decided she needed to find her husband for closure so she contacted Gene and Sandy Ralston, the same couple who helped find Nicole Horassi, who went missing in Tulita. Tyhee helped cover the cost of the search.

"I needed to be 100 per cent certain that Jaxon was in the lake," Smith said, "and that he didn't get out and that there was no possibility that he was lost somewhere and didn't know who he was or where he was or what was going on."

The Ralstons found Jaxon within 20 minutes of searching.

Smith said her husband may no longer be missing but he is still missed. He was a family-oriented man who loved cooking and was good to his friends, she added.

"He was goofy and he was there for anybody and everybody," Smith said. "If you called him at 3 a.m. because you were stuck he would get up and come help you out."

Smith met the B.C. native in 2003 through a mutual friend. She and her friend worked at Boston Pizza in Yellowknife together cleaning the restaurant before it opened. A number of times Jaxon was supposed to come by and meet her but didn't. Finally, he showed up. When Smith walked into the restaurant and saw him there was an instant attraction, she said.

"I got butterflies."

Soon after the two went on a date and after three years together they got married on Aug. 12, 2006.

Shortly before Jaxon's death, the couple had bought their first house together in Wetaskiwin, Alta., after moving from Yellowknife. They were planning to have their family visit over Christmas.

"We found the house in Wetaskiwin and Jaxon absolutely fell in love with it and I hated it. We compromised. I said you can pick the house, I get to pick the vehicles and kids' names," she said, adding the couple had been trying to have a child.

"I miss him every day," she said. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about him and that I don't miss him."

Smith said the family plans to spread Jaxon's ashes in Yellowknife and on Lake Winnipeg where his mother's ashes were scattered.

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