A little boy who was kidnapped by a stranger has been found safe and sound — more than 70 years after his abduction.
Luis Armando Albino was just six when he was lured from a California park in 1951 by a woman who promised to buy him candy at a nearby store. He had been playing with his oldest brother, Roger, at the time.
An extensive search was launched for the boy, but he was never found. Eventually, the trail went cold and his family was left to deal with the painful aftermath.
However, that all changed in 2020 when his niece took an online ancestry test “just for fun” and the results turned up a 22 per cent match with a senior living on the opposite coast.
Alida Alequin, 63, told The Mercury News in San Jose that she scoured the internet and old newspaper clippings and archives for several years before taking the results of the DNA test to the police in June of this year. Investigators with the Oakland police agreed it was a significant lead.
Albino was tracked down by police and provided a new DNA sample, which was matched to Alequin’s mother (Albino’s sister).
It was a strong match and Alequin said she and her mother were relieved and overwhelmed with emotion when they found out.
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“I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic,” she told The Mercury News.
Shortly after, Albino and some of his relatives were brought by the FBI to Oakland to meet his long-lost family. Although his mother died in 2005, he was able to meet his brother, the last person to see him.
For the more than 70 years Albino remained missing, he was always in the hearts of his family and his photo hung at relatives’ houses, his niece said. Before she died, his mother never gave up hope that her son was alive, and Alequin told the LA Times she kept a newspaper clipping about his abduction in her wallet.
Oakland Tribune articles from the time reported that police, soldiers from a local army base, the coast guard and other city employees joined a massive search for the missing boy. San Francisco Bay and other waterways were also searched, according to the articles. His brother was interrogated several times by investigators and stood by his story about a woman with a bandana around her head taking his brother.
Albino, a father and grandfather, is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, according to his niece. The woman who kidnapped Albino ended up raising him as if he were her son, after she fled with him to the other side of the country. Officials did not say where on the East Coast he was raised.
After their family reunion in June, Albino returned to the East Coast but came back again in July for a three-week visit. It was the last time he saw Roger, who died in August.
Alequin said her uncle did not want to talk to the media.
“I was always determined to find him, and who knows, with my story out there, it could help other families going through the same thing,” Alequin said. “I would say, don’t give up.”
— with files from The Associated Press
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