A six-year-old boy who was abducted from a California park in 1951 has miraculously been found alive more than 70 years later and reunited with his family, who never gave up hope.
It was February 21, 1951, when a woman lured little Luis Armando Albino away from his older brother, Roger, at a West Oakland park by offering him candy, CBS News reported.
The woman, whom Roger said wore a bandana and spoke Spanish to his Puerto Rican-born brother, then flew Luis to the East Coast, where a couple raised him as their son.
Luis’s niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin, told the Mercury News that the family always held the missing child in their hearts and had photos of him hanging up in their homes. His mother passed away in 2005 “but never gave up hope that her son was alive,” the CBS article said.
Shortly after the abduction, Oakland Tribune articles that the outlet obtained showed that police, soldiers from a local U.S. Army base, members of the U.S. Coast Guard, and other local officials conducted an extensive search of the Bay Area and its waterways.
Roger was interrogated “several times” and always maintained that his younger brother was kidnapped.
Everything began to change when Alequin did a DNA test in 2020 “just for fun” and unexpectedly found a man who was a 22-percent match. She did not receive any response from the man when she reached out, so the search did not immediately continue.
In 2024, Alequin and her daughters again picked up the search by viewing Oakland Tribune articles on microfilm at the local public library. One had a picture of her two uncles, Roger and Luis. This re-ignited her quest to find her missing relative, so she went to the Oakland Police Department with the information that she had found a DNA connection.
“Investigators eventually agreed the new lead was substantial, and a new missing persons case was opened,” reported CBS.
Investigators found the man who tested as a 22 percent match to Alequin on the East Coast, and he provided a DNA sample.
Alequin’s mother provided one, as well.
They turned out to be siblings.
Investigators told Alequin and her mother that Luis had been found on June 20.
“In my heart, I knew it was him, and, when I got the confirmation, I let out a big ‘YES!'” the niece recalled.
“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” she added. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”
Luis fought in Vietnam with the U.S. Marine Corps, became a father and grandfather, and served as a firefighter during his life.
Just four days later, the FBI assisted Luis in coming out to California with his family to meet with the ones he lost seven decades ago. He met with Alequin, his sister, and other relatives in Oakland on the first day before seeing his older brother, Roger, at his Stanislaus County home the next day.
Alequin told the Mercury News that her long-lost uncle “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”
Horrible story.
The only good thing is the kidnappers atleast gave him a good life but the other family I can’t imagine what they went through 7 decades. And that they already died not knowing what had happend to their child.
But at the same time I dunno… 7 decades is long. I think I would have been fine with knowing if my brother had a good life and is still alive and just not mention anything. He is 72 and his whole life was a lie… he was raised and loved by kidnappers, no contact to his family because he didn’t know about them…
I think everyone is different but maybe it is just me. If my parents weren’t my parents ( I am 31) I’d be fine not knowing anything at all and just keep it how it is. Now I am 31… imagine getting this information when you retire. Even if my parents weren’t my parents I’d be mad at them for kidnapping me but I’d be open for a dialogue. Sounds strange, but I can’t change the what people have done in the past and I’d have no “connection” to my real parents at this point in life.
I wonder what I’d do if I’d find out my parents kidnapped me. I’d be confused because I had been robbed my ancestry, history, people,… I’d be living a life I wasn’t meant to live. I think I’d need psych care. I wouldn’t want that at the age of 72. Right now at age 31 I’d need treatment but at the age of 72 I wouldn’t want to know that my life was not suppose to be how it was, especially if I can’t speak with my original parents and my kidnappers.
My grandfather did not learn that he was adopted until he was at his own mother’s funeral (his father had already died). Someone there believed that he knew, and had brought it up casually. He turned as white as a ghost and proceeded to not discuss it for ten years.
My father was there, and he has always had interest in discovering the truth.
30 years later, with my grandfather in his 90s, he has no desire to know his biological parents, and when he learned he is completely a different ethnicity than both of his parents, he shrugged it off and said it was irrelevant because his cultural identity from his parents is the only relevant factor. Perhaps there is some internal discord over it, but I truly think that he remains psychologically unbothered. This has postiively impacted my own relationship with “blood” and “family,” seeing them as irrelevant, yet also understanding my father’s own desire to know their identities and trace the roots… He views it as an opportunity to have more family and more layers of identity, not as a biological identity canceling out another identity.
Of course, knowing that there was no foul play makes it a lot easier.
Breitbart is not a resource for information. Please don’t pepper in neutral articles from them along with the other propaganda.
Holy shit, it’s a human interest story about a kidnapping that I happened to come across there.
Where are the lies…? Do you think someone over at Breitbart was like I gotta make a fake human interest story about a kidnapping that ends well - it also has to be FAKE, I can’t just lift it from other journalistic sources… I have to be true to the Breitbart motto of EVERYTHING MUST BE FAKE CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA, even when not explicitly conservative…
