[1][8][9] At age 15, she dropped out of school and worked as a "hoochie coochie" dancer at Coney Island.
[1][8][9] When she was 17, Tullis married her first husband, truck driver Tommy Mason; two years later, their son Joshua was born.
[1][8][9][13] The marriage was dysfunctional, and shortly after the birth of Joshua, Tullis moved back with her parents on Coney Island.
[1][9][13] Although Rocky appeared healthy, an X-ray technologist noticed irregularities in the boy's skull when he was about 2 years old.
A battery of tests conducted at UCLA Medical Center confirmed that Rocky had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare disease in which abnormal calcium deposits in Rocky's skull would distort his face and make it grow to twice its normal size.
Doctors told Tullis that her son would experience failing eyesight and hearing and increasingly severe headaches and that the intense pressure would destroy his brain before he turned 7.
[1][3][7][8] During the years they lived in Covina and Glendora, California, Tullis insisted that her son lead as normal a life as possible.
She ignored doctors who said her son's poor eyesight would prevent him from learning to read, and she disregarded teachers who tried to discourage her from placing him in a public school.
On the night of October 3, 1978, Tullis and a group of biker friends had a party to cheer up Rocky.
The next day, Tullis was at her lawyer's office working out details for beating a drug bust she says was a mistake.
[12] Rocky's body was donated to the UCLA genetics research center for science and then cremated.
[12] The character Gar, played by Sam Elliott in the 1985 film Mask, is based on Bernie.
[9] A year later, he was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, a deadly skin cancer, as a result of AIDS.
[9] In 2001, Tullis was reportedly working as a psychic counselor and living in a trailer park outside of Los Angeles.
[8] At the time of her death, Tullis was living in Glendora with her sister Dorothy Stuart and her niece Helen Cunningham.
Earlier in the year, Azusa police had found methamphetamine and pipes used to smoke the drug in her mobile home.
[2] Friends and family members said they had no idea Tullis was hurt until they read a short story in the Oct. 16 issue of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that reported an unidentified 70-year-old woman on a three-wheel motorcycle had been in an accident.