Luis Armando Albino was 6 years old when he was abducted from a West Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother in 1951. Now, more than 70 years later, Albino has been found.
The Mercury News first reported this week that Albino's niece in Oakland, using DNA evidence and newspaper clippings (and with the help of police, the FBI and the Justice Department), found her uncle living on the East Coast.
Albino is a retired firefighter and Marine veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, and is a father and grandfather, according to his niece, Alida Alequin, a 63-year-old Oakland resident who found Albino and reunited him with his family.
Albino and five of his siblings, brought by their mother from Puerto Rico, had moved to Oakland the summer before their kidnapping in February 1951.
He was playing with his 10-year-old brother Roger in Jefferson Square Park, at 7th Street and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way, near the family home, when a woman lured him with the promise of candy, the Oakland Tribune reported at the time. She then flew him to the East Coast, where he eventually ended up with a couple who raised him as their own son, Alequin said.
In June, Albino was reunited with his family in California. Alequin recounted his family's experience and their search for Albino. He said Albino's mother, Antonia, had always thought about him until her death in 2005. She kept a newspaper clipping with the article about his abduction in her wallet and a photo of Albino hung in the living room, Alequin said.
“She always hoped he would come home,” Alequin told The Times.
In 2020, Alequin took a DNA test for fun and the result was a 22% match with the man who eventually turned out to be her long-lost uncle. But she didn't immediately realize it could be him.
Earlier this year, while reminiscing about family with her daughters, Alequin had a spark of inspiration: “I started naming all of my mother’s siblings, and when I got to the youngest, Luis, the baby, I paused mid-sentence. I can’t explain what I felt, but I said, ‘I don’t think this person I found on Ancestry was a half-sibling like I first thought. I think he was the sibling who was kidnapped. ’”
She said that that night she and her daughters “started searching the Internet like crazy.” They found photographs that made them certain that the man they were looking for was their missing uncle.
Alequin took the information to Oakland authorities, who agreed to investigate the lead. With the help of law enforcement, Alequin persisted in his search and eventually located his uncle on the East Coast.
He provided a DNA sample that proved his identity.
When Albino was reunited with his family in California, “there were a lot of big, long hugs and tears, and then we sat down and just talked,” Alequin said.
Albino and his brother Roger, who had been there the day he was kidnapped, bonded over their military experience, as Roger had been an Air Force veteran. They talked about their childhood and their lives after the kidnapping, he said.
Alequin said his uncle had some memories of the kidnapping and his trip to the East Coast, but when he questioned the adults in his life, they gave him no answers. Albino wants to keep some of his experiences private and did not want to talk to the media, he said.
Albino's brother, Roger, died shortly after they were reunited this summer. Albino is planning another visit to California next year, Alequin said.
