[mso] Check for existence in column? Excel 2000

I am looking for a variation of vlookup, please. If I have a column called
LastNames, and some names below it such as:

LastNames
Apple
Banana
Conkright
Davidson

How do I check that simply for the existence of a name? If I want to see if
"Smith" is in that list, everything I check so far seems to want me to refer
to the column next to it. I.e.,
=vlookup("Smith",LastNames, 0)
will not work.

=vlookup("Apple",:LastNames,1)
returns whatever is in the cell next to it, which is not what will work
here.

Does anyone know how take a cell reference, check for its existence, return
the name if exists, return nothing if not?
Made up example:

=If_Exists(B3, LastNames, B3,"")
would be lovely if there was such a function.
If B3 is "Apple", then it will return "Apple" since it exists.
If B3 = "Smith", then it returns a blank since it does not exist.

Am I making sense?

Thank you.

Robert

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