Born in the Bronx to a mother who had tried repeatedly to abort her, and to a father who worked for the Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz, Podber was later remembered as a disruptive influence by classmates from West Walton High School.

[1] A wild child of the New York City art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, she helped to run the Nonagon Gallery, which showed the work of a young Yoko Ono and was known for jazz concerts by such performers as Charles Mingus.

[2]When funds were low, she found unorthodox ways of making money, engaging in businesses as diverse as dispatching maids to doctors' offices in an attempt to gain access to their drug cabinets, and running an illegal abortion referral service.

She did paperwork for B'nai Brith long enough to pick its safe and use its contents on her own check-counterfeiting machine.

[1] One boyfriend was a banker with whom she had sexual intercourse only on the banknote-strewn floor of his firm's vault.