It's a stunning happy ending to a 73-year-old cold case, as a man who was kidnapped in Oakland when he was six years old was finally reunited with his family once he was 79 years old.
This story starts in heartbreaking fashion. Way back in 1951, six-year-old Puerto Rican emigrant Luis Armando Albino was kidnapped from Oakland’s Jefferson Square Park, with his abductor whisking him to the East Coast where he would be raised by another family. His brother Roger told authorities he was grabbed by a woman with a bandana, and Oakland police, the Coast Guard, and ultimately the FBI were brought in on the manhunt.
The youngster Albino would not be found. Meanwhile, he would lead his own life inadvertently estranged from his real family, joining the Marines and serving two tours of duty in Vietnam, becoming a firefighter, and eventually retiring. The whole time, he did not know that he had an original family looking for him, 3,000 miles away.
“All this time the family kept thinking of him,” his niece Alida Alequin told the Bay Area News Group. “I always knew I had an uncle. We spoke of him a lot. My grandmother carried the original article in her wallet, and she always talked about him. A picture of him was always hung at the family home.”
That grandmother passed away in 2005, never again seeing the son she lost in 1951. But the niece Alequin kept up the search, taking a 2020 DNA test that identified a man who was a 22% possibility of being her uncle. She did research on the man, and even brought in the FBI and state Department of Justice. Those two agencies reopened their cases, while Alequin did more research on this distant man who might be her uncle.
On June 20 of this year, federal investigators confirmed that the man was indeed her uncle Luis Armando Albino. “In my heart I knew it was him,” Alequin told the News Group. “And when I got the confirmation, I let out a big ‘YES!’ ”
Luis Albino was flown to Okaland four days later and reunited with his family. He got to meet his brother Roger who was with him that day at the park, visiting Roger at his home in Stanislaus County. CBS News reports that brother Roger died in August, but the two were at least reunited one final time, and Albino is now back in touch with his surviving family.
“I’m so happy that I was able to do this for my mom and (uncle). It was a very happy ending,” the niece Alequin explained to the News Group. “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. I would say, don’t give up.”
Image courtesy Alida Alequin
