‘Thank you for finding me’: Man abducted as child found 70 years later

A man who was abducted 73 years ago has been found all thanks to an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings.

Luis Armando Albino was 6 years old and was playing with his older brother at a West Oakland, California, park when a woman came up to him, lured him away promising candy, the Mercury News reported.

The brother had been questioned several times but always said that a woman wearing a bandana took his brother.

Searches were conducted but always came up empty.

The woman then took Albino to the East Coast and given to a couple who raised him as their own son.

His family always remembered the little boy who had been born in Puerto Rico, with his mother never giving up hope that he would be found. She died in 2005 and never had a reunion.

“She always felt he was alive,” Alda Alequin, Albino’s niece, told the newspaper. “She took that with her to her grave.”

“She always had hope that he would come home,” Alequin told the Los Angeles Times.

But 63-year-old Alequin, with the help of police, the FBI and the Department of Justice and using DNA testing and newspaper clippings found Albino who is now a father and grandfather and living on the East Coast. Officials nor the family said exactly where.

Alequin did the DNA test in 2020 “just for fun” and was a 22% match with a man who she eventually found out was Albino.

Eventually inspired by a documentary that had Puerto Rican folklore, Alequin and her daughters started searching her uncle’s name online. Photos came up that made them believe they were on the right track.

“I started to name all my mom’s siblings, and when I got to the youngest, Luis, the baby, I paused in the middle of the sentence. I can’t explain what I felt but I said, ‘I don’t think this person I found on Ancestry was some half-brother like I first thought. I think he was the brother that was kidnapped.’ " Alequin told the Times.

She took what she found to the Oakland police who opened a case, looping in the FBI and the DOJ. Now that Albino has been found, Oakland’s missing person’s case is closed but the federal kidnapping one is still open, KTVU reported.

Once they tracked him down, he, along with his sister and Alequin’s mother, provided new DNA samples and they were a match.

The retired firefighter and former Marine reunited with his long-lost family this summer and was able to see his older brother before he died in August.

“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked,” Alequin told the Mercury News.

Albino did not speak to the media about his life but told his niece that he had some memories of what happened, but that the adults never answered his questions while growing up.

She said her uncle hugged and kissed her and told her “Thank you for finding me.”

She also said she may have had some help from Albino’s mother who would have been happy with the outcome.

“I think she’s happy, honestly, she was there guiding me too. It’s just the way everything worked out, it’s unbelievable,” Alequin told KTVU.

Albino plans to visit California again next year, the Times reported.

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