Page 23 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

When they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer and she quickly died after that. >> with shirley on her death bed, pepper tried to act like the dutiful daughter, tried 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, do you know, maybe she'd make a death bed confession and say, i did take you and here are 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...

Something that you really, really, really need and you kind of know, you think how it's going to go. >> i get emotional usually. usually i cry. 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 would say i can't do anything for you probably. >> you need this document. this is what you need to provide. 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 understa...

Instead the adult who brought her here, a woman named shirley, simply didn't take her home again. instead she packed some belongings, put the girls in the car and hit the road. where did they go? 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 armies to get a meal here and there. just -- >> what's it like to live in a car? >> it's horrible. it's embarrassing. >> she was confused, of course, and terribly frighten...

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 ...

The two girls listened wide-eyed 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 ...