shirley told pepper that renee was her sister. 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 anything wrong. i felt like if i did something wrong or whatever, she wouldn t love me. she would give me away. wouldn t love me? shirley told her, says renee, she was born to a prostitute drug addict named geri. that shirley saved baby renee,
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 claiming to be the biological mother of both pepper and renee. claiming to be the woman who, according to shirley and
i was so mad at you. i understand. i thought you gave me away. no. they spent hours together here talking about their pasts, their likes and dislikes. their amazing similarities. we gave them a few weeks to get to know each other, and then sat down again with pepper and renee. 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,
the door with a plan. i remember a woman coming over and knocking on the door. her name was shirley. a friend of her mother s. the little girl she brought with her was renee and renee was 6. a little older then. didn t matter. they dashed off to her bedroom to play. this is renee now. that room is stuck in her memory, too. her room was gorgeous. a nice sized room for a little kid. she had a canopy bed. tons of dresses. toys galore. and you had none of that. no. and i was like, wow, this is nice. an alien world to renee. the most wonderful thing she d ever seen. and while the little girls played in the bedroom, shirley was with bobbie in the living room talking. and then she called renee. so when it was time to leave, i didn t want to go. can we stay longer? no, but your new friend is coming with us, said shirley. oh, okay. so she came, and then that s how everything started. so it did. it was to be an overnight, the girls were told.
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 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 for the couple next door in room 109.