do you remember pepper? >> i lived a secret life. >> you first met her a few months ago. kidnapped at age four. >> we got in a car and we never went back. >> she spent decades trying to find her way home again, and as you saw here on "dateline," she finally made it. she thought. >> i said i think i'm rhonda kristy or do you know rhonda patricia kristy, then there was a long pause. >> when we first told her story, we thought nothing could ever top this. we were wrong. >> when i looked at the e-mail,

i just couldn't even believe it. >> something quite incredible happened after our show ended. and now after so many tears, so many years, so many turns in pepper's story. >> i was like wow. >> there are still more stunning twists to be revealed. >> it's amazing. the best gift ever. >> it's amazing. the best gift ever. >> lost and found. captions paid for by nbc-universal television good evening, become to "dateline." i'm ann curry. you may remember our story about a girl abducted at age four and raised by her kidnapper. for the next four decades she searched for her family, her name, herself. when we first ran this story, it had an extraordinary ending. but turns out that ending was just the beginning. here is keith morrison. ♪ >> here is where the story began, with the mother of a

teenage daughter, with a woman who had spent most of her life trying to figure out who she was, what was her name, where did she come from? like living without a floor beneath you, not to know those things. so we told her story, you might have seen it just a few months ago. her long search, her discovery of what felt like truth. but as you're going to find out now, real truth can be elusive, it can hide. and tonight, will finally emerge, amazing and bizarre. >> oh, my god! >> but at the beginning, all she had was a memory. >> a twin canopy bed with pink ruffles around it. kind of waved over the top of it. >> it was dream like really. for years, it was all that felt real in her upside down life. >> and it was all pink and

white. everything matched. >> the closet full of dresses, the dolls, the teddy bears. >> actually, there was a little old fashioned where you put the baby in the wagon. >> and the reason for the tormenting memories? >> it's a lot of hurt, sadness. sadness for the little girl that didn't have a life. >> for most of her life, the part after that little girl's bedroom, she has been pepper, and the vastly terrifying story of what happened to her, kidnapped, held captive for years, is the reason she gripped that life preserver of a memory. shocking where that memory will lead by the end of this hour. she was, she's certain of this, an only child, and spoiled most likely, showered with attention of toys and dresses by the parents whose faces she cannot quite pull into focus. they're in their little apartment. was it san diego perhaps? >> it looks like a very happy childhood, like love was there.

>> she knows there were two parents, blonde bee hive on her mother, but her name lost now. there was a nickname bobby, and in the early years, she was always, always there. her father, on the other hand, was absent mostly, long stretches away, punk waited by glorious reunions when she would be bustled up like a doll where the navy ships came in. >> she would see him, he was coming in from the navy, it was an exciting moment. she would get us dressed up and it was 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, all the trouble. >> holding my mom's hand. having fun with my mom. being in the moment of joy. i don't have bad memories. >> oh, yes, those, the bad memories, like the day everything good went away. it was 1973.

though she and her happy child bubble head have no idea what year it was, she knows she was not yet five, that it was autumn, that someone came to the door with a plan. >> i remember a woman coming over, knocking on the door. >> her name was shirley. she was a friend of her mother's, she said. she said the little girl she brought with her was renee and that renee was six. 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. nice size room for a little kid. had a canopy bed. she had tons of dresses, toys gallon or. >> and you had none of it. >> no. i was like wow. this is nice. >> an alien world to renee, the most wonderful thing she had ever seen. while the little girls played in the bedroom, shirley was with bobby in the living room talking. then she called renee. >> so i guess when it was time to leave, i didn't want to go. i said can't we stay longer. >> no.

but your new friend is coming with us, said shirley. i was like okay. so she came and that's how things started. >> so it did. it was to be an overnight the girls were told, a little fun. they would 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. >> never to be taken home again. >> no, never went back again. >> do you remember that feeling? >> yes. 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 bristol childhood entered the fog of history. the memory of the beautiful bedroom, all she had to confront the nightmare thus beginning.

a four-year-old on the road with her kidnapper. >> i knew everything happened to us was completely wrong at a very young age. >> when lost and found continues. save them. presenting woolite complete. it cleans your jeans, and won't torture your tanks. so your clothes stay looking and fitting like new. woolite. long live your wardrobe.

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the story you'll hear now lives in the vivid so real you could touch them memories of two frightened girls. it began in a down market hotel whose l.a. neighborhood was most decidedly not child friendly. it was to be a one night sleepover with new friend renee. instead, the adult that brought her here, a woman named shirley, simply didn't take her home again. instead, she packed some belongings, put the girls in her 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 five years old. >> we lived in cars and motels and going from state to state, staying at salvation army to get a meal here and there. >> what's it like to live in a car? >> horrible.

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. and 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 bobby actually give her away? shirley told pepper that renee was her sister. the two girls listened wide eyed as she 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 public assistance, though she used renee that way,

frightened, compliant renee. eager for a mother's love, even if that mother 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, that she was important to a prostitute drug addict named jerry, that shirley saved baby renee, raised her as a daughter. but kept renee in line by threatening to abandon her. >> did she ever threaten to do that? >> yeah, any time we did something wrong, she would say well, you stop doing that or i'm going to send you off to jerry's house. >> so they lived a life of packing up, fleeing state to state, one flop house to the next, searching for the cheapest place to stay and skip out of. hunger, constant. medical care, nonexistent. when money ran out, as it often did, shirley drove to the

nearest truck stop. the girls would bed down in the car and watch shirley sneak off to do, well, they didn't know. and alone and frightened, they held onto each other, watched the shadows of strange men pass by their car. until the night went, terrified and unable to sleep, renee followed shirley. >> i am getting scared, i am thinking she left her, she died or something. i go in and she is on the side here, and he is on top of her, and i didn't know what was going on. i got scared and then she seen me, and she yelled at me, said get out of here. go. >> at least then, they had a bit of money. but always pepper was afraid. afraid to ask for help, afraid to ask why she had been taken. afraid of shirley's threats. >> she would scare us, to

believe that we were in a better place. she was doing something good for us. >> did you ever understand why she wouldn't take you back home? >> her personality was very up and down, like very angry and so if i asked questions, she would say stuff like if you want to find your mom, she's on the streets shooting heroin and a prostitute. >> tirades were frequent, neglect part of life. verbal and physical abuse a regular occurrence. >> she would whip us with the belt, slap us, verbally cuss at us, verbally abuse us. >> threaten to send you away. >> right. >> i just took the belt because it just -- if you take it, it's hard to explain, but if you just take it, she gets out of the rage faster, so to speak. >> they went to school when they could. made very few friends and lost the ones they did make.

struggled to be ordinary kids, and then normal teenagers. >> all i wanted to be is loved. that's it. and i never got any kind of love when i wanted. >> instead, they were trapped. truck stop nomads in the care of a woman that kidnapped not one but both of them. and they drifted across state lines for years. then sometime in the early '80s they settled down here. shirley pulled up to this motel in los angeles county and took a job as the motel 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. >> 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 baby-sitter for the couple next door in room 109. 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 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 i'm going to show her, she'll care. 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 a family, a second time had to return. and then finally by the time she turned 16, pepper left for good. that meant she left renee behind, too. renee who so needed pepper and who was alone now with shirley. >> she was my best friend growing up, that was my best friend. we did everything together. fight like sisters, did everything together. >> renee was feeling abandoned. >> i told her don't go, you know, stay here, you know, i need you. you're my sister. so she went, she did her thing. and i was upset and i was sad. >> by 1986 and on her own now, pepper had given up hope of finding her real parents. now she began to encounter a more immediate problem. the inevitable trouble that comes from having no real name,

no birth certificate, no id. though she was enrolled in school under the name rhonda smith at shirley's urging, she had no way to prove it was her legal name. and without some cooperation from shirley, the search for such documents seemed hopeless. and then how did you find out she was sick? >> 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 see her regularly, tried to make her comfortable. but there was another terribly important reason to see her then, maybe the most important one. one last opportunity to find out who she was. as she was dying, did you try to find, you know, maybe she would make a death bed confession. >> oh, yeah. >> say i did take you, here are what your parents names are, how to find them. any of that happen? did you ask? >> oh, yes. >> and shirley had a response

for the girl she renamed pepper. the question was, what could she do with that answer? coming up. if jay see dugard could be found after 18 years, certainly there must be hope for pepper. >> triggered a lot of my own personal memories, you know, and how come i didn't get found. i felt so missing. >> but would she be missing much longer

♪ it was the summer of her 16th year. a girl they called pepper smith, at the death bed of the woman that had stolen her with questions burning in her brain. she had to know, who was she, where did she come from, who were her parents, what was her true identity, and at the very least, where could she find the

documents that could give her a real life? she took a roundabout route, asked indirectly. >> i took driver's ed like any 16-year-old, i want to be free, work, be free from all of this, i had a plan, you know, and i asked her for -- i need my birth certificate, i need this, you know, and she told me they changed the laws. you can't get your driver's license until you're 18 years old. yeah. and i'm supposed to believe this. as i sit in a classroom where i have friends getting permits. so she took the lies with her. she was not going to tell. >> what about the birth certificate? >> never gave me a concrete answer, nothing. couldn't get anything out of her. the lies stayed with her. >> shirley knew the answers, of course, knew the whole bizarre story. but she looked pepper in the eye through her obvious pain and told her nothing. she left the lies behind, and took the truth to her grave on

july 29th, 1986, at the age of 63. she was buried here, this cemetery, in an unmarked grave. renee now 19 got on with life, moved in with her boyfriend. soon pepper showed up at their apartment, homeless, and nowhere else to turn to. and everywhere pepper went from then on, shirley's poisoned 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, departments of vital records with perhaps predictable results. >> tell me what it feels like when you know you have to go to an official and ask for something that you really,

really, really need, and you kind of know you think how it's going to go. >> i get emotional usually. i usually cry. it was really -- it just brings me to a sad place. >> you would be sitting across the desk from somebody crying? >> absolutely. >> and they couldn't do anything for you. would say i can't do anything for you. >> you need this document. this is what you need to provide. >> sorry. >> i have no way to get this document because i don't know my parents' names and i don't know my real name. pepper. >> and once again, pepper felt perhaps understandably like giving up. but by then, she was living with her daughter in south lake tahoe, working as a waitress. and what do you know, hometown girl jaycee dugard kidnapped years earlier was found. >> the community was just buzzing all over the place with joy. and i was happy for her. but it triggered a lot of my own personal memories.

how come i didn't get found. and i felt still missing. >> so once again, charged up with determination, she launched a fresh attempt. turns out 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 birth certificate and thus 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 law apparently actually talked to pepper, asked her questions, hauled out records not readily available online. all pepper could offer were the names bob and bobby, 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 certificate that the appropriate question should have been this. was this her real past? coming up, a journey ending. >> i was like whoa. >> or was it just beginning. when loss and found continues. [ male announcer ] we asked real people if they'd help us with an experiment for febreze fabric refresher. they agreed. [ experimen"loss" and found. [ experimenter 2 ] what do you smell? lilac. clean. "lost and found continues.thereg [ experimenter 2 ] whthat's really fresh. like children's blankets. smells like home. [ experimenter 1 ] okay. take your blindfolds off. ♪ hello? [ male announcer ] and now new and improved febreze fabric refresher with up to two times the odor elimination so you can breathe happy, guaranteed. those are your lips with covergirl lip perfection. get beautiful color now...

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♪ 37 years she had been searching for her parents, her life, her name. now just as she had given up ever finding the answer, here it was. a copy of her birth certificate with her real name in black and white. rhonda patricia christie, and there were the names of her parents, too, robert and barbara christie. >> this is it, you know, i was like whoa, they were my parents, bobby and bob, they were my parents. >> with names and social security numbers, rhonda and her friends tracked down a phone number in ohio. she dialed the number. a man answered.

it was june 5th, 2010. >> i said are you robert dean christie because it was on the birth certificate. he said yes. i said are you married to barbara black welder, were you married? he said yes. then i said i think i am rhonda christie or do you know rhonda patricia christie? then there was a long pause. >> this is who she was talking to. his name is bob christie. >> i almost dropped the phone. she knew i hesitated. she said this is your daughter rhonda. and there was something that clicked in my mind that the voice rang a bell. >> he called to my mom, barbara, to pick up the phone, said rhonda is on the phone. she picked up the phone, first thing out of her mouth was shirley stole you. >> pepper was shaking inside and out. >> i went into the most emotions i've ever had in my entire life

ever. >> the memories were true, or so it certainly seemed. she got on a plane for ohio. they were all, of course, 37 years older, and in a way strangers now. but here they were. all the images she had clung to infa fantasy and dreamed about r 37 years. >> there you are in your bath. >> all those rolls. >> you was a chubby little baby. >> and happy. >> look at you, just learning to walk and smiling the whole way. you had a good life, honey. >> i know. >> so it was happy and sad, comforting. but also deeply strange, because sitting on this couch, pepper heard some stunning revelations, such as these were not her birth parents. she had been adopted, and the arrangement was mysterious. and now it was barbara's turn to

tell a story. shirley had been her friend, she said. had told her about a woman working in the sex trade named jerry smith that didn't want her babies. one day shirley showed up at barbara's house with a three month old she called rhonda patricia smith. barbara could see it was iffy, but she wanted that baby so badly. so she said she ignored the red flags. >> nope, didn't care. didn't really care. >> she was going to see to it, she said, that rhonda was loved and cared for by the best parents she could ever possibly have. bob and barbara legally adopted their little princess four years later in the fall of 1973. and it was shortly after that, said barbara, when shirley and renee showed up at her door. >> and the kids played together and we visited together and she asked if rhonda could come spend

the night with renee. took me awhile to get an answer to that. i really had to think about that hard. i'm one of these tender hearted people, and i said well, i want her to know her sister. >> sister? yes. barbara told rhonda she and renee were half sisters, daughters of the same mother, the woman that worked the streets. barbara said by then she didn't trust shirley with rhonda, but -- >> i want rhonda to know her sister. i wanted her to have family and stuff and i asked bob, and he said no, she couldn't at first. and then he relented, let her go. and next morning, we went to get her, and they were gone. >> and they didn't come back. bob and barbara called the police right away, of course, but here's what they said they were told. that the police could do nothing

for them since they had allowed rhonda to leave with shirley. they were on their own. and so desperate they said they started their own search, discovered shirley had taken the girls to a relative's house several states away. but when they got there, it was too late. all that remained sitting on the porch were the little red shoes rhonda wore the day she was kidnapped. it was hopeless. they returned to their childless home. nothing left but the photographs of the little girl who stopped growing up for them at four. and now out of the blue, that phone call. and here she was. >> pretty good, how are you? >> i'm good. >> it's definitely a gift. >> not only did we get a daughter, we got a granddaughter. >> just in time, turns out. robert had terminal cancer, would die a year later. still, back then they celebrated. renee joined them for rhonda's birthday and the christie's 38th

wedding anniversary. an amazing reunion. of course, we were happy to broadcast it all around the country. no idea that something quite unbelievable would happen, because one of the people that tuned in that night was a woman named jerry. and oh, what a story she had to tell. it was a story two sisters had waited a long time to hear. >> 99.99% probability. yes. it was confirmed. >> when "loss and found" continues.

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and release the magic. sc johnson, a family company. and release the magic. ♪ when we first told you the story about pepper smith and her life-long journey to find her family, her identity, it was a friday night this past march, and the following monday morning. >> my office received a call, and then i received an e-mail. >> attorney gloria all read found herself looking at a remarkable message. she had been helping the two sisters deal with their new identity issues and there it was. a message on her blackberry. >> when i looked at the e-mail, i couldn't 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 barbara was a child abandoning drug addict prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim allred could take on simple faith. >> i asked her to come in and see me the next day which she was anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring whatever evidence she had. >> in that meeting, the woman presented her evidence. >> she brought some photos she had of pepper and renee when they were very little. >> she told allred she was a waitress when the girls were little, brought a photo of that, and a picture of shirley, and also a photo of a man she said was the girls' father, long since dead. she said her name was jerry. >> i asked her immediately,

jerry, would you be willing to do a dna test. she said i'll take the dna test, but these are my children. i know it. >> allred put the dna test on a fast track and waited, and within a week called pepper and renee to her office to hear in person results of the tests. >> 99.99% probability. yep. that was confirmed. >> that's it. i can't believe this is actually happening. i really can't right now. >> how soon could they meet jerry, the sisters wanted to know, and what's she like, how did she know shirley. we arranged a reunion for the next day. jerry arrived first and told us how she saw her long lost girls on our program. >> i saw the picture of shirley, i went crazy. i was hysterical. i knew that's who she was. and then when i saw the girls, i knew they were mine.

>> after all those years. >> there they are. >> what did that feel like? >> it felt great. i was hoping i could find my children because i'm getting old. i would just like a miracle. >> jerry's story, that shirley who took the girls had been her friend, turned roommate, turned baby-sitter. >> she says i'll baby-sit for you, take care of her while you work. i said well, that's great, because i really thought i was blessed. >> first it was renee she looked after. then renee and pepper, then two years later, little brother raymond leonard smith junior. wait. a brother? it wasn't just the two girls. there was a younger brother the girls never knew they had. the father wasn't around very much. jerry supported them all with what she could make as a waitress. and shirley made a change, a positive one it seemed, at least

financially. >> she got this job supposedly at the motel managing, which was further from where i worked, so i arranged with her to watch the kids while i worked. >> it was a godsend really since jerry had to be hospitalized for weeks after raymond was born, and then get back to work, and find a new home to take the kids to. >> i come out there on my days off to stay with the kids, spend some time with them. so then i called her and told her that i was coming to get the kids, and the next day i went out there, and gone. >> not a sign of them. no kids. no shirley. frantic then she went to the police. >> what did you tell them, your children had been kidnapped? >> yeah. they took the report and that's the last i heard. >> did you go back and talk to them again? >> i went down there two, three times, kept telling me the same thing, they hadn't found anything. >> jerry said she didn't know who else to talk to, so she

looked on her own and found year after year nothing. had no idea, she said, that shirley had left pepper with barbara, that barbara persuaded a court that pepper had essentially been abandoned, and thus could be adopted, or that shirley stole her back again. and then there they were, telling their story on "dateline." telling how shirley and barbara had described her. >> yes, i heard what they said about me. i was not a street walker. i was a waitress all my life. >> also said you didn't really want your children. you were happy to abandon them. >> i never abandoned my children, never. ever. and would never, ever do that. >> and she wasn't a drug addict either, she says. she's not had a smooth or easy life, and for much of it, she has missed her children, and blamed herself for what

happened. >> trusting shirley. >> yes. >> and for not having the kids under your wing all the time. >> that's right. >> tell me about that. >> because to me, i feel like it was my fault because i put them in the hands of this monster. >> we are in a hotel room in los angeles. jerry is eager, anxious, terrified, visibly shaking. and then they come around the corner. their first meeting in 37 years. >> waited a lifetime for this. >> oh, my gosh. i feel like i am dreaming still. i don't really get it yet. >> i don't have a memory. >> i am sad because i was there

with you. >> i can't believe you're my mom. >> yes, you're my babies. you're my babies. it's been 37 years! >> and just about here as they cling and cry, something rather magical happens. the center of gravity shifts. >> what happened? >> it's renee that wants answers now. >> what happened? >> you will know. you will know. i promise you. you were literally adopted. >> please, what happened to me. she was adopted. but what happened to me? i thought i would never find you ever. >> i thought i would never find you either. >> i searched and i searched and searched. i didn't know where to go. i had no money for an attorney. when i turned on "dateline" and saw you girls, come on, honey.

it's okay. >> i thought you didn't care about me. >> you know i loved you, both of you. i could never not love you. >> i was so mad at you. >> honey, i understand. >> i thought you gave me away. >> they spent hours together here talking about their pasts, their likes and dislikes, their amazing similarity. we gave them a few weeks to get to know each other, then sat down again with pepper and renee. so there it is. you have your mother, but what now? 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 into order, 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, thanksgiving, her there with me. >> and pepper? well, for one thing, pepper has adopted her real birth name, the one her parents gave her before it was lost in abductions and adoption. it is ronique smith. >> i feel content everything has taken place the way it played out, finding my identity, my real identity, my biological father, seeing a picture of him, all of these exciting things going on. but i think it's not over yet. i don't feel the journey is quite over yet. it's just starting, this part of it is just starting. >> so it is, because of course, one of them is still missing. >> other brother raymond is still missing. >> we know he's out there

somewhere. >> so he is,

♪ it was pepper's story when we began, pepper now officially ronique who set out to find a birth certificate and discovered a past richer and more complex than even she dreamed possible. to find first the mother of her memory, and then her long lost birth mother. to discover that renee was her actual sister, and now to learn she had a brother. raymond leonard smith junior is what jerry called him before he, too, was snatched away, abducted by the baby-sitter, shirley. where was he now?

jerry gave us a copy of his birth certificate, he would be just about 40 now. and our chances of finding him seemed frankly slim. we called 40-year-old ray smith's all over the country, in colorado, in maryland, in new jersey, in kansas. but did he go by the name ray smith? and then a call back. it was the ray smith from colorado. he had the right name. the right age. place of birth. had grown up without knowing any blood relatives. all this ray smith knew was his mother's name. according to his birth certificate was jerry. he was starting to sound a lot like our ray. we asked if he would submit to a dna test. he agreed. and there was no doubt we had found him. we brought ray and his fiance to a los angeles hotel and showed

him the story of his sisters. in a way his story, too. >> i thought that the story itself was sad. sounds like they had a rough life and it was really similar to mine. >> so it was, and it began the same way, too, when shirley took him from jerry. except ray was turned over to a woman named anna lee brown who named him jimmy brown, the only name he knew growing up. >> she told me she had adopted me, but i was also shipped around a lot from home to home because she had a lot of health problems from what i was told. >> he was neglected he said, and often abused, bounced around for years, until anna brown shipped him to a colorado couple when he was 14, and that's when he found his birth certificate. started calling himself ray smith and began puzzling over the apparently unanswerable

questions of his life. >> why did ann name me jim brown if me name was really ray. how come i never knew about jerry, things like that? and i wonder, you know, was i kidnapped? >> no answers from anna brown who died soon after that. and as for life in colorado, by the time he was 16. >> things were getting a little rough, maybe because of my past. i wasn't an easy kid. so i was put into foster care. >> and then he graduated from high school. he got a job, moved in with some friends, and started his own rock band. this youtube video shows him singing lead. and for all he has wondered about his past, he had come to believe he would go to his grave without meeting a blood relative, until now. >> wow. they are actually in the same

building i'm in now. that's amazing to me. >> and here they were. >> oh, my baby! oh! it's good to hug you. >> good to see you. >> meeting family for the first time. >> you kind of look like me. >> after so many years. >> first time meeting my blood. >> it's great. >> the same mother and father. >> and 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. far better. >> good to see you. >> good to see you, too. >> the family that was stolen was found. >> it's amazing. the best gift ever. >> they sat here for hours, shared their photos, got to know each other.

and made plans. like families do. >> and that's all for now. i'm ann curry. for all of us here at nbc news, i'm ann curry. for all of us here at nbc news, thank you for joining us. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com this sunday, no deal. debt talks abruptly break down in washington as the president and the house speaker blame each other. >> one of the questions that the republican party's going to have to ask itself is can they say yes to anything? >> it's the president who walked away from his agreement and demanded more money at the last minute. >> this was an extraordinarily fair deal. >> the white house moves the goal post. >> leaders are feeling the heat, brutally hot summer trkts but more importantly than that, a fast-approaching deadline of august 2nd to raise the nation's debt ceiling as debt defaults

broil europe, the u.s. economy is now on the brink. without a deal to raise the ceiling, america's credit rating may be downgraded, and the government would be unable to pay its bills. >> if we default, then we're going to have to make adjustments, and i'm already consulting with secretary geithner in terms of what the consequences would be. >> so, this morning, we're going to get the very latest on weekend negotiations which did continue, despite the breakdown. is a deal still possible? with us, the president's chief of staff, bill daley, and a response this morning from a top republican negotiator, tom coburn of oklahoma. then, is washington broken? while politicians stonewall and fight over the debt talk, the public recoils. approval ratings for congress plummet and pessimism about the country's future rises. are our politicians capable of meeting the challenges this country faces? a special discussion this morning. with us, former senator chuck