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
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.
a little fun. they d stay with shirley in her los angeles motel room, return the next morning. that was the plan, said shirley. but shirley lied. we got in the car, and we never went back. and my life completely changed from that point on. completely. this woman took you away. yes, and this was you weren t to be taken home again? know. never went back again. do you remember that feeling? yes. it was i wanted to go home. she had been kidnapped. must have been. there was no little girls overnight in shirley s motel room. they stopped there only to pack some belongings, hit the road and a blissful childhood entered the fog of history. the memory of the beautiful bedroom. all she had to confront the nightmare just beginning. coming up, on the road with her kidnapper. i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age.
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, 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 scared. then as the weeks and months and then years went by, as her powers of reasoning grew, the question grew, too. did her mother bobbie actually give her away?
question grew, too. did her mother, bobbi, actually give her away? 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 demand. without pepper s birth sert, 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. 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,