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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. a little fun. they d stay with shirley in her los angeles motel room, return the next morning. that was the plan, said shirley.
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.
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
we fight like sisters. we did everything together. renee was feeling abandoned. i was telling her, don t go. stay here. i need you. you re my sister. so she went. she did her thing. and i was upset and sad. by 1986 and on her own now, pepper had all but given up hope that she d ever find her real parents. now she began to encounter a more immediate problem. the inevitable trouble that comes with having no real name, no birth certificate, no i.d. though she was enrolled in school under the name rhonda smith at shirley s urging, she had no way to prove this was her legal name, and without some cooperation from shirley, her search for such documents seemed hopeless. and then how did you find out that she was sick? she turned completely yellow when they diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer and she literally died quickly after that. with shirley on her death bed, pepper tried to act like the dutiful daughter, went to