RICHMOND, Va. -- 31 years ago, it was the talk of the town.
On August 3, 1992, nearly 200 dogs and cats were seized from a woman's home in Hanover County after deputies received tips that the animals were being kept in deplorable conditions.
“I would not want to keep any of my enemies in these type of conditions these dogs were kept,” said one of the prosecutors at the time.
A judge ultimately found the owner guilty of more than a dozen counts of animal cruelty.
Some of the pets had to be euthanized, while others were put up for adoption.
“I remember when my mom saw that story she thought ‘I’m going to get a dog,’” said Trisha Smith. “You know, she always wanted a dog, and she always wanted us to have a dog.”
Smith was just a kid living in Chesterfield back then. She had not thought about any of this in years - until recently.
Her mom, on the other hand, is always on her mind.
“A wonderful person,” said Smith. “Worked two jobs a lot of the time, and so she was really busy trying to take care of me and my sister.”
Even if that meant splitting up the family.
In 1996, after the family moved from Chesterfield to Richmond, Robin Hopkins and her husband sent Trisha to live in North Carolina, where they thought she would receive a better education.
“They decided to let me go stay with my aunt and uncle here,” said Smith during an interview at her home outside of Raleigh. “My plan always was to go and finish out school here and then come back to Virginia.”
But Smith ended up marrying her high school sweetheart, building a life, and raising a family.
Despite the distance, she and her mom remained close. But the separation did lead to some second-guessing.
“I always thought to myself, like, what if something happens, would I regret not being there, and something tragically did happen.”
Hopkins died several years ago.
And while Smith has many fond memories of her mother, those can fade with time.
In terms of something tangible, she only has a handful of mementos and photographs.
“I don’t have many of my mom,” said Smith. “Just because back in that day the parents took all the pictures and I really didn’t have a lot.”
Smith’s three children have even less.
“They would ask me ‘Well, do you have any videos of your mom? Do you have videos of when you were a kid?’ I’m like, no, we didn’t have that back then, not everyone had a huge video camera back in the day.”
Unless… you worked at a television station.
One night about two months ago, while she was sleeping, Smith remembered something she had long since forgotten about.
“I had a dream that I saw my mom on a news station,” said Smith. “So I called my dad and I said ‘Wasn’t mom on TV adopting a dog once?’ And he was like yeah, ‘I think she was.’ And I said well I am going to reach out to the news station to see if they have that video, and my husband immediately was like they’re not going to have that video it’s too old.”
Early the next morning, on a wing and a prayer, Smith sent an email to our newsroom.
“I knew deep down that it was a long shot,” said Smith.
The CBS 6 video vault contains hundreds of old tapes and film reels, some labeled, while others have been archived with few details.
After days of looking, two potential tapes were identified and sent off to be digitally transferred.
One of them contained a story from January 13, 1993 – about the Hanover adoption event.
During the closing moments of that report, our crew spoke to a woman. She was not identified by name.
We texted Smith a screenshot.
She confirmed that was her mother.
A few days later we traveled to North Carolina, to show her the whole clip.
“Words can’t explain how excited I am right now, just to see her and hear her talk,” said Smith.
An emotional moment for a daughter who never got the chance to say goodbye to her mom.
On July 25, 2001, just about one week after a family beach vacation, Robin Hopkins took her own life.
“She went into my grandma’s room and got her gun underneath her pillow and she walked out to the front door,” said Smith.
She was only 42 years old.
“She struggled with mental illness for a few years,” said Smith. “She struggled with migraines a lot, it was debilitating to her.”
Smith missed a call from her mom the night before her death.
“Her message stated she was sorry for what she was about to do but that she could no longer go on because her life felt like she was so alone and she had nobody and she felt like she was a burden on everyone,” said Smith. “But that she loved me and my children and to never forget her, that she’d always be watching over me.”
Smith desperately tried to call back… but to no avail.
“It just kept giving me busy signals, apparently they were having bad storm that had knocked out the phone lines, I couldn’t get through.”
She’s always wondered… what if she had.
“Who knows what I could have said or done in that moment to maybe change her mind,” said Smith.
But the loss of her mom did change the course of Trisha Smith’s life.
“I never even thought about going into healthcare before that, never,” said Smith, who now works with doctors at Duke, treating people with chronic pain, including migraines. “I see their compassion for people, I wish my mom would have been around to see me doing what I’m doing now and maybe I could have been able to help her.”
But now getting a chance to see a video of her mother during the good times, that’s something Smith can’t wait to share with others, especially her kids.
“Now to be able to show this to them, they’re going to love it, they’re going to be able to see their grandma,” said Smith. “It’s different because when I see pictures I don’t hear her voice, you know, and watching the video I see her alive and speaking and that’s almost like it was yesterday. Just to see her breathing and happy and living her life - it's worth everything.”
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