Page 8 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

When we first told you you the story about pepper smith and her lifelong journey to find her family, her identity, it was 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 cl...

Number in ohio. she dialed the number. a man answered. it was june 5th, 2010. >> 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...

State lines for years. and then some time in the early '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 them...

On july 29th, 1986, at the age of 63. she was buried here, this cemetery, in an unmarked grave. 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 ne...

Official and ask for something that you really, really, really need and you kind of know, you think how it's going to go. >> i get emotional usually. i usually 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 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...