When i looked at the email, i just couldnt even believe it. But after so many tears, so many years, and so many turns in her story i was like whoa. There are still more stunning twists to be revealed. Its amazing. Its the best gift ever. Lost and found. Hello. Welcome to dateline extra. A young girl was abducted at the age of four and raised by her kidnapper. For the next four decades she searched for her family, her name, and herself. Her story has an extraordinary ending and as it turns out, that ending was just the beginning. Here is keith morrison. Our story begins with this mother of a teenage daughter. A woman who had spent most of her life trying to figure out
was absent mostly. Long stretches away, punk wa. We would go see him because he was coming in from the navy, and so it was an exciting moment, and she would get us all dressed up, and it was the anticipation of going to the shipyard and having a lot of attention. I think as a child. The memories are how she survived it all
with determination, she launched a fresh attempt. there s such a thing as adult adoption. find someone to adopt her and even if she couldn t find her parents, at least she could get an official identity and a birth certificate and a passport. a friend offered to adopt her so pepper and friend applied and waited. and something quite amazing happened. someone in that great california bureaucracy did some research. a lot, apparently. asked to pepper, asked her questions, hauled out records not readily available online. all pepper could offer were the names bob and bobbie and the date of her birth. and somehow, buried among all those files in all their hundreds of millions, a match. and there it was, came in the mail, after all these years, a copy of her actual birth certificate. the key to unlock her past, though she had no idea then, looking at that birth
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. still, having tasted freedom once, pepper was determined to get away from her kidnapper for good. the second time she took a chance, moved out with the family and a second time had to return. and then finally by the time she turned 16, pepper left for good. but that meant she left renee behind, too. renee who so needed pepper and was alone now with shirley. she was my best friend growing up. that was my best friend. we did everything together.
wow. they are actually in the same building that i am in right now. that is amazing to me. and here they were. oh, my baby. oh. hello. it has been forever. it is great to see you. meeting family for the first time. and you guys kind of look like me. [ laughter ] after so many years. so this is my first time meeting my blood. us, too. it is great. it is so great. and so this is how pepper s desperate search for a warm memory of a lost childhood ended. you look like our dad. far bigger than she imagined and far better. it is good to see you. it is good to see you, too. the family that was stolen. it is amazing. it is the best gift ever. it is. they sat here for hours and shared their photos and got to know each other.
when we first told you the 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 mother of both pepper and renee. claiming to be the woman who, according to shirley and