Page 24 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> 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 without some cooperation from shirley, her search for su...

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 frightened at first. she begged, take me home. shirley ignored her. she imagined running away. >> i had nowhere to go. i was too s...

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 couldn't even believe it. i looked at it about three times. am i really seeing this? >> it was a woman claiming to be the biological moth...

'80s they settled down, here. shirley pulled up to this motel in los angeles county and took a job at the motel's cleaning woman in exchange for a free room. and if it wasn't much, at least it gave them some 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 being absent all the time. >> so they got themselves up every morning and went to school and kept goi...

We gave them a few weeks to get to know each other, and then sat down again with pepper and renee. so there it is. you have your mother, but what now? are you -- will you have a relationship with her? >> well, we're going to move her in with me. >> move into your house? >> yes, yes, once she gets all her affairs in order. we're going to move her in. >> why? >> because i want her. my husband wants her, too, there, so. i want to have a relationship with my mom. like i was telling you earlier, i want to go shopping. i want to have lunch. i want to go buy stuff. i want to have christmas, thanksgiv...