Boy Abducted in California in 1951 Found Alive

A few years ago, 63-year-old Alida Alequin took an online ancestry test, “just for fun”...

Luis Armando Albino (right), now 79, was finally reunited with his long-lost brother Roger, 82 | Credit: Alida Alequin

The results changed her life – and her family’s – more than she could have imagined. The test revealed a 22 percent match with a man who, she would go on to discover, had been abducted in the early 1950s from a playground in California. Her uncle Luis Armando Albino was taken at age six and raised by a couple who pretended he was their own child.

Albino was missing for more than 70 years until Alequin started searching through old photos and newspaper clippings. Her inquiries turned up a picture of Luis as a boy with his brother, Roger, that prompted police to open a new missing persons case. Investigators tracked down Albino on the east coast and, with the help of the FBI, he was reunited in California with some of his family, including his brother and sister. “We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin said. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”

Alequin wants this happy end to a sad story to inspire other people. “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,” she said. “I would say: don’t give up.”

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