Jodi Arias was born in Salinas, California, on July 9, 1980, to Bill and Sandra Arias. She was the oldest of many siblings. When she was a teenager, her family moved to the small Northern California town of Yreka, where they opened a Mexican restaurant where Jodi worked as a waitress. According to her journals, she was unhappy about the move and went through a hard time in Yreka.
The young woman had a tough go making new friends and instead focused on her old hobby, photography, which she had picked up at age ten. When she was seventeen, the troubled young woman ran away from home to live with Bobby Wattis, her 20-year-old, on again off again, boyfriend.