Smith was born in Portland in 1973 to attorney and former Umatilla County district attorney R. P. Joe Smith and family therapist Suzanne Peck. He was named for U.S. President Thomas Jefferson. He is a great-great-great grandnephew of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. His parents split before his second birthday, and he moved with his mother to South Pasadena, California. He returned to Portland during his seventh-grade year, and later became class president at Grant High School. His mother died of breast cancer when Smith was a teenager.
