A 6-year-old boy who was kidnapped from a California playground more than 70 years ago has finally been found thanks to his determined, and unknown, niece.
Making headlines all over the English-speaking world, Luis Armando Albino was reunited with lost family members when they discovered he was living on the East Coast thanks to a DNA test match with his niece, who had never given up hope of finding him.
The story begins in 1951 when Albino and his brother Roger were on a playground in West Oakland. A woman in a red bandana arrived in a van and said in Spanish that he would buy Luis some candy. Instead, she kidnapped and flew him to somewhere on the East Coast, where a family raised him in captivity as if he were their own son.
This diabolical plot succeeded in spades for the kidnappers, and despite Albino’s mother never giving up hope of seeing him again, 73 years passed with the breadth of the whole country separating them, and she died in 2005.
AP, which first broke the story, wrote that Oakland Tribune reports from the time said that his brother Roger had been interrogated by the police several times, and his story was always the same regarding the woman in the bandana. As a result, a massive search party was organized up to and including the military, but Albino was long gone.
The first inkling that Luis Albino might be alive was picked up by 63-year-old Alida Alequin—Albino’s sister’s daughter.
“Just for fun,” she took a commercially available DNA test, and found she matched 22% with an individual on the East Coast. AP declined to stay where. Trying through the limited contact options offered through the kit database, Alequin received no response, but her hope and curiosity had been piqued.
Going to the Oakland police, she convinced them the new lead was substantial, and she even managed to find a photo from the library of an Oakland Tribune story on the kidnapping of Luis and Roger side by side to use in the investigation.
A new missing persons case was opened. The FBI got involved, and prescribed DNA tests to Albino and Alequin’s mother.
On June 20th, investigators went to her mother’s home, Alequin said, and told them both that her uncle had been found.
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“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin told AP. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”
Luis was able to travel to Oakland with the help of the FBI where he met his brother Roger, his sister, and niece Alequin—whom he embraced first—saying “thank you for finding me.”
A lifetime had passed since Luis had seen his brother. Luis had joined the Marine Corps, served in Vietnam, and was a retired firefighter. He wasn’t only a father as well, but a grandfather.
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Luis later flew out for another 3-week visit in August, after which Roger passed away, living to just within 4 months of being able to see his long-lost brother again.
Alequin hopes the story is an inspiration to other families going through something similar. Her message: “don’t give up.”
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