CLERMONT, Ga.,None — An Atlanta woman who was sold as a baby by her drug-addicted mother 22 years ago has been reunited with the two sisters she never knew she had.
Their mother died in a Georgia prison serving time for murder.
Channel 2's Diana Davis was there as the sisters met for the first time
Tiera Rice vanished 22 years ago. Two tiny pictures were all Crystal Smith and Teesha Jenkins had to remember Rice.
The women told Davis days after baby Tiera was born their mother, Wanda Gee, took Tiera to live with an aunt. Just days after that, they said the baby was gone.
Smith was 12 at the time, and said her aunt and grandmother gave her no explanation.
"I saw her maybe three times, then I went back another time and she was gone. And I said, 'Where's the baby?' and they just said, 'We don't know.' They just wouldn't tell me. And nothing was ever said about it. Every time you would mention it they would just get mad," Smith said.
Jenkins was 6 when her sister disappeared. She told Davis she remembered bits and pieces of her sister.
"I remember feeding her and then it was just kinda, it was just hush," Jenkins said.
Tiera Rice grew up 40 miles away in Madison County. She was raised not as Tiera Rice, but as Candace Flores. She told Davis she found a baby bracelet with the name Tiera Rice on it when she was 12. It had been tucked away in a drawer.
"And it had the same birthday as my birthday, and I thought I might have a had twin that I didn't know about or something," Rice said.
The couple she'd known as mom and dad brushed off the years of questions.
At age 15, the woman Tiera thought was her mother died of a drug overdose.
That's when Rice said her family broke the news.
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"They said they were sorry to tell me that my mom had died and my dad wasn't my dad, my mother wasn't my mother, and I'm not Candace Flores," Rice said.
She said the man who raised her told her there was no point trying to find her biological mother, that she had sold her long ago for drugs.
"They told me that they had heard I had been sold and my mom wasn't a good person, that I didn't need to be with her anyway 'cause they are bad people," Rice said.
At the same time, Wanda Gee was doing prison time for murder.
In every visit with daughters, Crystal and Teesha, Wanda Gee told her daughters to never stop searching for Tiera.
Wanda Gee wrote her wishes in her will just before she died, which read, "I wish for my two children, Crystal Garrsion and Teesha Jenkins, to continue to search for my youngest baby daughter, to be found. Her name is Tierra Rice. She was adopted out illegally. I hope anyone with information will help my daughters with this request. I want Tiera to know she has two sisters that love her and that her birth mother loved her as well."
Years later, at age 22 and a 6-year-old son of her own, Tiera Rice was fed up with not knowing her true identity.
She hired Atlanta private detective Tim McWhirter and within days he told her who she was and that she had two sisters.
"They have been looking for me for a lifetime and I never knew that I was lost in the first place," Rice told Davis.
Smith told Davis she has clear memories of life as a child with a drug-addicted mother.
"You'd say, 'Mom, where are you going?' and she'd say, 'I'm going to get a fix,'" Smith said.
Through tears, Smith told Davis she'd always assumed her missing sister Teira had found a better, happier life.
"I thought that she was so much better off. Then when I found out she wasn't, it broke my heart," Smith said.
With no birth certificate, no identity until now, Tiera Rice had lived life on the edge, supporting herself and her son as an exotic dancer.
"I wanted to go school like normal people. I wanted to drive a car like normal people, support my son. And all this forced me into the life I'm now. I'm not too proud of the things that I have done just to make it through, but people aren't perfect," Rice said.
All three women told Davis they have forgiven their mother. Now what was lost is found.
All three women have different fathers. Tiera's biological father was deported to Guatemala years ago. They believe he's dead.
The sisters said the reunion is just the beginning. They told Davis they will have a big family gathering for Thanksgiving.
WSBTV
