Important Takeaways:
- A boy who was abducted from a California park in 1951 has been found alive and well on the East Coast thanks to DNA testing and the persistent efforts of his family.
- Luis Armando Albino was just 6 years old when he was kidnapped from the Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother, lured by a woman who promised to buy him candy.
- Instead, she “transported him out of state and eventually to the East Coast,” the Oakland Police Department (OPD) told NPR.
- State and federal authorities searched extensively for Albino in the wake of his disappearance, but couldn’t find him or his remains.
- All the while, his mother, Antonia Albino — who had moved the family from their native Puerto Rico just the year before — never gave up hope that he was alive.
- Alida Alequin, 63, knew she had a missing uncle because her family talked about it. Alequin decided to take an online DNA test in 2020 “just for fun,” as she told the Mercury News.
- FBI agents were eventually able to interview Albino and take a DNA sample.
- His statements and genetics confirmed what police call “the best possible outcome”: He was indeed the boy who’d been snatched from the park 73 years earlier.
- Details about Albino’s life on the East Coast are relatively scarce, and police say his case remains under investigation.
- He has some memory of the abduction and his cross-country trip, she added, but had never gotten answers from the adults in his life.
- Alequin said her uncle hugged her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Thank you for finding me.”
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