Luis Armando Albino was six years old in 1951 when he was abducted while playing at an Oakland, Calif., park. Now, more than seven decades later, Albino has been found thanks to help from an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings.
The Bay Area News Group reported Friday that Albino’s niece in Oakland — with assistance from police, the FBI and the Justice Department — located her uncle living on the 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 Feb. 21, 1951, a woman lured the 6-year-old Albino from the West Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother and promised the Puerto Rico-born boy in Spanish that she would buy him candy.
Instead, the woman kidnapped the child, 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.”
