Page 14 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I usually cry. it was really -- i would -- it just brings me to a sad place. >> sitting across the desk from somebody crying -- >> oh, absolutely. >> and they wouldn't do anything for you? would say i can't do anything for you. >> you need this document. this is what you need to provide. >> sorry. >> i have no way to get this document because i don't know my parents' name. i don't know my real name. pepper. >> and once again, pepper felt perhaps understandably, like giving up. but by then she was living with her daughter in southlake tahoe working as a waitress. what do you know? hometown girl...

To make her comfortable. but there was another terribly important reason to see her then. maybe the most important. one last opportunity to find out who she was. as she was dying, did you try to find -- you know, maybe she'd make a death bed confession and say i did take you and here's what your parents names are and how to find them. any of that happen? did you ask? >> oh, yeah. >> and shirley had a response for the girl she renamed pepper. the question was, what could she do with that answer? >> coming up, if j.c. dug allison rosaer after 18 years, certainly there must be hope for pepper. ...

As shirley explained to strangers 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 didn't know. not for money certainly. there were no ransom demands. and without pepper's birth certificate, shirley couldn't use her to score public assistance, though she did use rene that way. frightened, compliant rene, eager for a mother's love even if that mother figure was shirley. >> i never wanted to do anything wrong. i felt like if i did somet...

With determination, she launched a fresh attempt. turns out that such a thing as adult adoption, find someone to adopt her, and even if she couldn't find her parents, at least she could get an official identity and birth certificate, and thus, 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 talked to pepper, asked her questions, pulled out records not readily available online. all pepper could offer were the names bob and bobbie and the da...

The little girl had no idea, but she did know that from now on she had a new name. they called her pepper, pepper smith. she was not yet 5 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. she begged, take me home. shirley ignored her. she imagined running away. >> i had nowhere to go and i was too scared. >> then as the weeks and months and then years went by, as her powers of ...