Soon Pepper News Today

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...

With determination, she launched a fresh attempt. theres such a thing as adult adoption. find someone to adopt her and even if she couldnt find her parents, at least she could get an official identity and a birth certificate and a passport. a friend offered to adopt her so pepper and friend applied and waited. and something quite amazing happened. someone in that great california bureaucracy did some research. a lot, apparently. asked to pepper, asked her questions, hauled out records not readil...

Dysfunction was as troubled and messy as her own life was. she swallowed her pride and moved back to room 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 run away, plot my escape, before it went into action, i was in my mind going, she -- im going to show her. shell care. like i remember thinking that. but she didnt care. she didnt come to get me. >> still, having tasted freedom once, pepper was determined to get ...

>> wow. they are actually in the same building that i am in right now. that is amazing to me. >> and here they were. >> oh, my baby. oh. >> hello. >> it has been forever. >> it is great to see you. >> meeting family for the first time. >> and you guys kind of look like me. [ laughter ] >> after so many years. >> so this is my first time meeting my blood. >> us, too. >> it is great. it is so great. >> and so this is how peppers desperate search for a warm memory of a lost childhood ended. >> you ...

>> 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...

Didnt have a life. >> for most of her life, the part after that little girls bedroom, she has been pepper, and the baffling, terrifying story of what happened to her, kidnapped, held captive for years, is the reason she gripped that life preserver of a memory. shocking where that memory will lead by the end of this hour. she was certain of this, an only child and spoiled, most likely. showered with attention and toys and dresses by the parents whose faces she cannot quite pull into focus. theyre...

Barbara, was a child abandoning drug addled prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim allred could take on simple faith. >> i asked her to come in and see me the very next day, which she was very anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring whatever evidence she had. >> in that meeting, the woman presented her evidence. >> she brought some photos that she had of pepper and renee when they were very little. >> she told allred she had been a waitress when ...

>> allred put the dna test on the fast track and waited. and within a week called pepper and renee to her office to hear in person the results of the test. >> 99.99% probability. >> thats it. >> yep, that means its confirmed. >> i cant believe this is actually happening. >> how soon could they meet geri, the sisters wanted to know. and whats she like? how did she know shirley? we arranged a reunion for the next day. geri arrived first and told us how she saw the long lost girls on our program. >...