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We fight like sisters. we did everything together. >> renee was feeling abandoned. >> i was telling her, don't go. stay here. i need you. you're 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 she'd 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 shirley's urging, she had no way to prove this was her legal name, and witho...

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, shirley's 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 needed documents to live. she needed a passport. so she contacted state offices. their departments...

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 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 renee that way. frightened, compliant renee, 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 ...

>> 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 i'm 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 i'd 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 phone. rhonda is on the phone. she picked up the phone and the first t...

It was really -- i would -- it just brings me to a sad place. >> you'd be sitting across the desk from somebody crying. >> oh, absolutely. >> and they wouldn't do anything for you? >> no. they could say i can't 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 don't know my parent's 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 south lake tahoe working as a waitress and, what do you ...