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.
She visited the police’s missing person bureau to press for information almost daily at first, then weekly, then monthly, and eventually annually, according to the Mercury News, which first reported the news of his discovery last week.
The family renewed their search 15 years after the kidnapping, when Albino would have been 21, SFGATE reported. They made multiple trips to Puerto Rico, where Antonia suspected her son had been taken, but turned up nothing.
“This is a rare situation when a boy disappears and doesn’t eventually show up — alive or dead,” Oakland police Lt. Dominic DiFraia told The Oakland Tribune in 1966. “I’d give an awful lot to find out why.”
It has taken seven decades to begin to unravel that mystery. Earlier this year, long after his mother had died and his case had grown cold, it was Albino’s niece who finally tracked him down.
DNA tests and newspaper clippings led investigators out east
Alida Alequin, 63, knew she had a missing uncle because her family talked about it. Her late grandmother always kept a newspaper clipping about his abduction in her wallet and displayed his photo at their family home.
Alequin decided to take an online DNA test in 2020 “just for fun,” as she told the Mercury News.
Among the results was a 22% match with a man she had never met. The Oakland resident reached out to him but didn’t hear back or pursue it further — until earlier this year, when she watched a documentary that inspired her to renew her search.
Alequin and her daughters searched the man’s name online, pored over microfilm of old Oakland Tribune articles at the public library and became increasingly convinced that the man from the DNA database was their long-lost relative.
OPD says she contacted their missing persons unit in March to alert them about the DNA test results and her uncle's possible identity.
Armed with new leads and technology, police reopened Albino’s case.
They searched through public records of the potential match and collected DNA samples from Albino’s living siblings, with help from the California Department of Justice and the FBI.
Police said investigators were unsuccessful in their multiple attempts to contact Albino and his family, and eventually were able to get FBI special agents dispatched to contact him at his residence.
The FBI confirmed to NPR that it assisted Oakland police “by our ability to access … resources across state lines.” Authorities have not specified where on the East Coast Albino had been living.
The 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.
“We didn't start crying until after the investigators left," Alequin told Mercury News. "I grabbed my mom's hands and said, 'We found him.'”
A "family reunion over 70 years in the making"
Details about Albino’s life on the East Coast are relatively scarce, and police say his case remains under investigation. They are asking anyone with information to contact the OPD Missing Persons Unit.
Mercury News says Albino is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He spent most of his life believing he was the “son of another couple,” according to SFGate.
In June, Albino flew to California to meet Alequin and his other relatives. Police said the visit was arranged and funded by OPD investigators, FBI Victims Advocates and the California DOJ.
“It was an emotional moment for all parties involved and was a family reunion over 70 years in the making,” they added.
Alequin said her uncle hugged her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Thank you for finding me.”
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.
During that trip, Albino reunited with his brother Roger, who had been with him on that fateful February day.
Alequin said the two “grabbed each other and had a really tight long hug,” then sat and talked about the kidnapping, their military service and more.
Their reunion came at a bittersweet time: Roger died two months later, in August.
“I think he died happily," Alequin said. "He was at peace with himself, knowing that his brother was found.”
She said she was glad she could bring some closure to her mom and uncle and believed her grandmother — who died in 2005 — would be happy, too.
“And who knows, with my story out there, it could help other families going through the same thing,” Alequin added. “I would say don't give up."
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