Page 9 - Pepper Smith News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Sleepover with new friend renee. 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,...

Literally died quickly after that. >> with shirley on her death bed, pepper tried to act like the dutiful daughter, went to see her regularly, 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 deathbed 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 she renamed pepper. t...

And when the family moved out of the motel, pepper went with them. but it didn't last long. pepper's new household caught in its own spiral of alcoholism and dysfunction was as troubled and messy as her own life was. she swallowed her pride and moved back to room 110 colonial motel, even though, by then, shirley didn't seem to care much what she did. >> i remember when i was trying to so-call run away, plot my escape, before it went into action, i was in my mind going, she -- i'm going to show her. she'll care. like i remember thinking that. but she didn't care. she didn't come to get me. >> s...

Soon pepper showedp 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 of vital records with perhaps predictable results. tell me what...

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 going. and then, pepper was 12. eight of those years with shirley when she saw her chance to escape and seized it. she made herself useful as a babysitter ...