Page 12 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Baby-sitter to the couple next door in room 109. when the family moved out of the motel, pepper went with them. but it didn't last long. pepper's 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 didn't 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, i'm going to show her, like i remember thinking that, but she didn't care. she didn't come to get me. >> still, having tasted freedom once, pepper was dete...

Friendly. it was to be a one night sleepover with a new friend renee with a woman named shirley who didn't take her home again. she packed belongings, took the girls in a car and didn't 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. >> what's it like to live in a car? >> it's horrible. it's embarrassing. >> she was confused, of course, and terribly frightened at first. ...

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, it's 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 it's not over yet. i don't feel that the journey is quite over yet. it is just starting. this part of it is just...

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 motel's cleaning woman in exchange for a free room. if it wasn't 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 shirley's disapproval. >> shirley would tell us, girls don't go to school, they get married. why do you want to go to school? i didn't like being late to school. i didn't like b...

>> pepper was shaking inside and out. i went into like a -- the most emotions i think i've 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 smiling in the hallway. you had a good life, honey. >> so it was happy and sad, comforting. but also d...