Page 6 - Pepper Smith News Today

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 mom, barbara, to pick up the ph...

A year with xfinity mobile. plus, ask how to keep your current phone. visit your local xfinity store today. and now for the conclusion of "lost and found," here again is keith morrison. >> it was peppers story when we began. pepper officially now ronnique who set out to find a birth certificate and discovered a past that was richer and more complex than even she dreamed possible. to find first the mother of her memory and then her long lost birth mother and to discover that renee was her actua...

So there it is. you have your mother, but what now? are you -- will you have a relationship with her? >> well, were going to move her in with me. >> move into your house? >> yes, yes, once she gets all her affairs in order. were going to move her in. >> why? >> because i want her. my husband wants her, too, there, so. i want to have a relationship with my mom. like i was telling you earlier, i want to go shopping. i want to have lunch. i want to go buy stuff. i want to have christmas, thanksgivi...

>> 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 name rhonda smith at shirleys urging, she had no way to prove this was her legal na...

Told her nothing. she left the lies behind and took the truth to her gave on july 29, 1986. at the age of 63. she was buried here. this cemetery in an unmarked grave. renee, now 19, got on with life. moved in with her boyfriend. pepper showed up at her apartment, homeless and nowhere else to turn to. everywhere pepper went, shirleys poisoned gift followed because of that woman and what she did. pepper was officially a nonperson. so it took a little while for determination to come back. she was i...

Baby-sitter to the couple next door in room 109. when the family moved out of the motel, pepper went with them. but it didnt last long. peppers new household caught in alcoholism was as troubled and messy as hers was. she moved back to 110 colonial motel even though by then shirley didnt seem to care much what she did. >> i remember when i was trying to, so call runaway, plot my escape, before it went into action, i was in my mind going, im going to show her, like i remember thinking that, but s...

Friendly. it was to be a one night sleepover with a new friend renee with a woman named shirley who didnt take her home again. she packed belongings, took the girls in a car and didnt take them home again. where did they go? she had no idea. she knew she had a new name. they called her pepper. pepper smith. she was not yet five years old. >> we lived in cars and motels and going from state to state staying at salvation armys to get a meal here and there. >> whats it like to live in a car? >> its...

I want to have lunch. i want to go buy stuff. i want to have christmas, thanksgiving, her there with me. >> and pepper? well, for one thing, pepper has adopted her real birth name, the one that her parents gave her before it was lost in the abductions and the documents, its ronique. ronique smith. >> i feel very content of finding out who i am, finding my mom, and my real identity and my biological father, and the fixtures of him and all of the exciting things going on. but i think its not over ...

Not one but both of them. they seemed dumped across a number of state lines for years. sometime in the early 80s, they settled down here. shirley pulled up to this motel in los angeles county and took a job as the motels cleaning woman in exchange for a free room. if it wasnt much, at least it gave them a measure of stability and they signed up at a local school, junior high for pepper, high school for renee. much to shirleys disapproval. >> shirley would tell us, girls dont go to school, they g...

>> pepper was shaking inside and out. i went into like a -- the most emotions i think ive ever had in my entire life ever. >> the memories were true or so it certainly seemed. she got on a plane for ohio. they were all of course 37 years older and in a way strangers now. but here they were. all the images she had clung to in fantasy, dreamed about for those 37 long years. >> there you are in your bath. >> all those rolls, too. >> chubby little baby. >> look at you. just learning to walk. and smi...