A man who went missing as a child in 1951 has been found the width of a continent from where he was taken.
Luis Armando Albino was 6 when he disappeared from an Oakland, California, park on Feb. 21, 1951.
His brother Roger told police that a woman promised his brother candy, and he went with her.
On that fateful day, a woman lured Albino from the park, promising the boy in Spanish that she would buy him candy.
Alida Alequin, 63, never got over her uncle’s disappearance and eventually tracked him down with the help of a DNA test that showed a match with an East Coast man who later proved to be Albino, according to KTVU-TV.
Albino did not respond to attempts to contact him then, but Alequin persevered with some help from the police and the FBI.
“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.”
#LuisArmandoAlbino is alive.
70 years ago, at only 6YO old, Luis was lured with the promise of candy by a woman who abducted him.
A couple ended up raising him as their own.
He became a marine and a firefighter.
After all these decades, Luis was reunited with his brother.
— Jennifer Coffindaffer (@CoffindafferFBI) September 23, 2024
Pictures emerged that made her realize there was a relative out there she needed to find.
“My daughter found a lot of pictures of this man, and we started comparing. The resemblance was so strong; how much he looked like my other uncles. And then another picture where he looked so much like my grandmother, that one gave me chills, and I said ‘there’s something here,’” she said.
She said her grandmother died in 2005 still hoping to find Albino.
“I think she’s happy, honestly, she was there guiding me too,” she said. “It’s just the way everything worked out, it’s unbelievable.”
On June 24, the long-awaited reunion took place as Luis Albino met his relatives in a brief visit
“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin said. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”
Albino “hugged me really tight and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek,” she said.
“It was just hugs and tears, lots of hugs and tears… It was nice,” she said.
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Later, he spent time in July with his brother, Roger.
“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked,” she said, discussing the day of the kidnapping, their military service “and more,” she said of the moment the brothers met.
Roger had briefly been a suspect in his brother’s disappearance but never wavered from telling police a woman took his brother.
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