Pepper Smith News Today

her name is pepper. >> i lived a secret life. >> she was kidnapped at age four. >> we got in the car, and we never went back. >> she spent decades trying to find her way home again, and she finally made it. or, so she thought. >> i said, i think that i am rhonda patricia christine. i said, do you know her? and there was a long pause. >> her story had many ups and downs. >> when i looked at the email, i just could not even believe it. >> but after so many tears, so many years and so man...

four. >> we got in the car, and we never went back. >> she spent decades trying to find her way home again, and she finally made it. or, so she thought. >> i said, i think that i am rhonda patricia christine. i said, do you know her? and there was a long pause. >> her story had many ups and downs. >> when i looked at the email, i just could not even believe it. >> but after so many tears, so many years and so many turns in her story. >> i was like, wow. >> there are still more stunning...

When i looked at the email, i just couldnt even believe it. But after so many tears, so many years, and so many turns in her story i was like whoa. There are still more stunning twists to be revealed. Its amazing. Its the best gift ever. Lost and found. Hello. Welcome to dateline extra. A young girl was abducted at the age of four and raised by her kidnapper. For the next four decades she searched for her family, her name, and herself. Her story has an extraordinary ending and as it turns out, t...

 Katy Keene is currently scheduled for a midseason premiere - meaning that it won't air on TV in North America until January 2020 at the earliest.

>> when we first told you the story about pepper smith and her lifelong journey to find her family, her identity, it was a friday night in march 2011. and the following monday morning -- >> my office received a call, and then i received an e-mail. >> attorney gloria allred found herself looking at a remarkable message. allred had been helping the two sisters deal with their new identity issues, and there it was. the ping of a message on her blackberry. >> when i looked at the e-mail, i just coul...

We fight like sisters. we did everything together. >> renee was feeling abandoned. >> i was telling her, dont go. stay here. i need you. youre my sister. so she went. she did her thing. and i was upset and sad. >> by 1986 and on her own now, pepper had all but given up hope that shed ever find her real parents. now she began to encounter a more immediate problem. the inevitable trouble that comes with having no real name, no birth certificate, no i.d. though she was enrolled in school under the ...

Renee, now 19, got on with life, moved in with her boyfriend. soon pepper showed up at their apartment, homeless and nowhere else to turn to. and everywhere pepper went from then on, shirleys poison gift followed. because of that woman and what she did, pepper was officially, at least, a nonperson. so it took a little while for determination to come back. she was in her mid-20s, a single mother by then. if only she could find her birth certificate. that could lead her to her parents. anyway, she...

As shirley explained to strangers that she was their grandmother. that their parents had been killed in a car accident. >> i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age. >> why had she been taken? she didnt know. not for money, certainly. there were no ransom demands. and without peppers birth certificate, shirley couldnt use her to score public assistance. though she did use renee that way. frightened, compliant renee, eager for a mothers love, e...

>> i said are you robert dean christie, he said, yes. i said are you married to a barbara blackwelder, or were you? he said yes. i said i think im rhonda christie or do you know rhonda patricia christie and then there was a long pause. >> this is who she was talking to. his name is bob christie. >> i almost dropped the phone. she knew id hesitated and she said this is your daughter rhonda. and it was something that clicked in my mind that i reck -- the voice rang a bell. >> and he called to my m...

It was really -- i would -- it just brings me to a sad place. >> youd be sitting across the desk from somebody crying. >> oh, absolutely. >> and they wouldnt do anything for you? >> no. they could say i cant do anything for you probably. >> you need this document. this is what you need to provide. >> sorry. >> i have no way to get this document because i dont know my parents name. i dont know my real name. pepper. >> and once again, pepper felt, perhaps understandably, like giving up. but by the...