A California Boy Was Kidnapped from a Park in 1951. He's Just Been Found Alive (sfgate.com) 34
An anonymous reader shared this story from SFGate:
A boy who was kidnapped from an Oakland playground in 1951 has been found alive on the East Coast, a remarkable resolution to a mystery that has haunted his family for over half a century.
On February 21, 1951, 6-year-old Luis Armando Albino was playing with his older brother Roger at Jefferson Square Park. The boys had recently immigrated with their mother and four other siblings from Puerto Rico... That afternoon, Luis and 10-year-old Roger walked down the block from their home at 730 Brush Street to play in the park. They were approached by a woman in her 30s, wearing a green bandana over her hair, who began chatting with Luis in Spanish. She promised she would buy him candy if he came along with her, and little Luis agreed to join her. Wary, Roger trailed the pair for a while before returning home to alert an adult to the strange encounter. Oakland police were called by frantic family members and a search was immediately launched...
Antonia [the boy's mother] was convinced her son was alive. "She came once a week, then once a month, then at least once a year, to see the shake of the head, to have the answer 'no' translated for her although she could read it in the officers' faces," the Oakland Tribune wrote in 1966...
Decades passed.
In 2020, Luis' niece, Alida Alequin, took a DNA test on a whim, the Mercury News reported. The service returned several possible family members to the Oakland woman. One of them was a man who Alequin had never met. After some internet sleuthing, she began to suspect this man might be the missing uncle she'd heard so much about. She reached out to the man but didn't hear back.
Earlier this year, Alequin tried again. Armed with photos, she took her evidence to the Oakland Police Department's missing persons unit. In short order, the FBI and California Department of Justice were also investigating Alequin's lead. They discovered the man was living on the East Coast, had worked as a firefighter and served two tours in Vietnam with the Marine Corps. This week, the Mercury News first reported that a DNA test confirmed what Alequin suspected: This was Luis Albino.
In June, Luis flew to California to reunite with his family, among them his devoted brother Roger... For over 70 years, he lived on the East Coast believing he was the son of another couple....
When Luis met Alequin for the first time this summer, he held her in an embrace. "Thank you," he said, "for finding me."
On February 21, 1951, 6-year-old Luis Armando Albino was playing with his older brother Roger at Jefferson Square Park. The boys had recently immigrated with their mother and four other siblings from Puerto Rico... That afternoon, Luis and 10-year-old Roger walked down the block from their home at 730 Brush Street to play in the park. They were approached by a woman in her 30s, wearing a green bandana over her hair, who began chatting with Luis in Spanish. She promised she would buy him candy if he came along with her, and little Luis agreed to join her. Wary, Roger trailed the pair for a while before returning home to alert an adult to the strange encounter. Oakland police were called by frantic family members and a search was immediately launched...
Antonia [the boy's mother] was convinced her son was alive. "She came once a week, then once a month, then at least once a year, to see the shake of the head, to have the answer 'no' translated for her although she could read it in the officers' faces," the Oakland Tribune wrote in 1966...
Decades passed.
In 2020, Luis' niece, Alida Alequin, took a DNA test on a whim, the Mercury News reported. The service returned several possible family members to the Oakland woman. One of them was a man who Alequin had never met. After some internet sleuthing, she began to suspect this man might be the missing uncle she'd heard so much about. She reached out to the man but didn't hear back.
Earlier this year, Alequin tried again. Armed with photos, she took her evidence to the Oakland Police Department's missing persons unit. In short order, the FBI and California Department of Justice were also investigating Alequin's lead. They discovered the man was living on the East Coast, had worked as a firefighter and served two tours in Vietnam with the Marine Corps. This week, the Mercury News first reported that a DNA test confirmed what Alequin suspected: This was Luis Albino.
In June, Luis flew to California to reunite with his family, among them his devoted brother Roger... For over 70 years, he lived on the East Coast believing he was the son of another couple....
When Luis met Alequin for the first time this summer, he held her in an embrace. "Thank you," he said, "for finding me."
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Propaganda for DNA? DNA exists!
DNA Aren't Real!
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Is this subtle propaganda for DNA after negative publicity lately?
Fight Big DNA and its propaganda! Join the 80% of Americans who support mandatory labeling [washingtonpost.com] on foods containing DNA!
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no means no (Score:2)
You don't 'immigrate' from Puerto Rico to CA (Score:1)
Life is Stranger Than... (Score:2)
... [Spoiler Alert!] True Detective Season 3 [wikipedia.org] fiction.
Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
For sharing such a heart warming story in these miserable times. I don't care it is not about tech, we just dont get enough positive news these days.
Re: Thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
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Positive news doesn't sell. Negative news gets far more attention, clicks, ad revenue, and potential to motivate action. Making people good and mad is a very powerful political tool, as well.
There's no "these days" about it. The emphasis on negative news has been around ever since there was news.
Incidentally, too much of it absolutely does skew your perception of reality. It's normal for people to believe that their neighborhoods and the world in general is much more dangerous than it is. Every strange
A 6 year old just shrugged and switched families? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Biographical memory is much more malleable than most people realize. Human memory is not like a hard drive where you put bits of data into it and then retrieve them later unchanged. Human biographical recall is more like reimagining of things that happened to you in the past. It's like your brain has a kind of schema for what happened, but your mind's eye fills in the details. That makes it very easy to add and delete details, and every time you recall a memory the schema changes a little bit. One neuros
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Or maybe he liked his new family better.
Re: A 6 year old just shrugged and switched famili (Score:2)
Kids dont forget that sort of thing. The details maybe, but not the main facts.
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Kids kidnapped at age 8 or under stop trying to return home pretty quickly, coming to accept stories for their new living situation and losing details of their old one.
And memories are malleable. I have few memories before age 8, and the ones I do have e.g. older and more familiar versions of my parents copy-and-pasted in. I am often surprised looking at old photos.
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In the 1950s kids didn't have cell phones or the internet. He might not have known mother's telephone number or postal address.
When I was 6 years old, there also were no cell phones or the Internet. But I can still recite the number of my parent's land-line from back then (despite it having been obsolete for > 40 years), and of course I knew the name of the city and the name of the street and the number of the house we lived in, even the license-plate number of the car my father drove back then.
Sure the child may have been hindered to contact his family by the abductors for some time, but he certainly had plenty of opportunity
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It was 1951 and he was from Puerto Rico. Kids in 1951 were not as smart as the kids of today. It's thanks to technologies such as, radio, TV, telephone, computers, internet, mobile phone etc. that today's kids are much smarter than kids of the past. Luis probably never ever saw any of those devices before he was kidnapped.
Re: A 6 year old just shrugged and switched famili (Score:2)
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In the 90's, I was living in a rural area. I saw little girl walking down the street and I thought that odd. So I went to talk to her, I stooped so we were eye level, hopefully not to scare her. I asked her where she lived, it was right next door. I asked her what her phone number was so I could at least call them first. She didn't know. I finally wound up walking her back home but before we left the road, her mother pulled up. The kid had been left off the school bus and finding no one home decided to go w
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Or maybe even just telling him "Your parents were sadly killed in a car accident" right away.
I don't see that as a hole at all.
No explanation what the woman did with him? (Score:3)
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Re: No explanation what the woman did with him? (Score:1)
He didnâ(TM)t immigrate (Score:1)
Not tech, so it does not belong on Slashdot. (Score:2)
Turning Slashdot into a tabloid is contemptible. Yet another calculated step in wrecking the site the "editors" will never admit taking for that reason.