6-Yr Old Boy Abducted from Calif Park in 1951, Found Alive After 7 Decades, Niece, DNA Test
'Six-year-old abducted from California park in 1951 found alive after 7 decades.' Niece locates her uncle Luis Armando Albino living on other side of the country after search sparked when she took online DNA test ‘just for fun.’ The Guardian, Sept. 22, 2024.
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A man who was abducted as a six-year-old while playing in a California park in 1951 has been found more than seven decades later thanks to the help of an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings. The Bay Area News Group reported on Friday that Luis Armando Albino’s niece in Oakland – with assistance from police, the FBI and the justice department – located her uncle living on the US east coast.
Albino, a father and grandfather, is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, according to his niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin. She found Albino and reunited him with his California family in June. On 21 February 1951 a woman lured the six-year-old Albino from the park in West Oakland, where he had been playing with his older brother, and promised him in Spanish that she would buy him candy.
Instead, the woman kidnapped the Puerto Rico-born boy, flying him to the east coast, where he ended up with a couple who raised him as if he were their own son, the news group reported. Officials and family members didn’t say where on the east coast he lives. For more than 70 years, Albino remained missing but he was always in the hearts of his family and his photo hung at relatives’ houses, his niece said. His mother died in 2005 but never gave up hope that her son was alive.
Oakland police acknowledged that Alequin’s efforts “played an integral role in finding her uncle” and that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for”. In an interview with the news group, she said her uncle “hugged me and said ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek”. The first notion that her uncle might be still alive came in 2020 when, “just for fun”, Alequin said, she took an online DNA test. It showed a 22% match with a man who eventually turned out to be her uncle. A further search at the time yielded no answers or any response from him, she said.
Early this year, she and her daughters began searching again...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/23/luis-armando-albino-abducted-six-year-old-oakland-found
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