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Biotech

A California Boy Was Kidnapped from a Park in 1951. He's Just Been Found Alive (sfgate.com) 65

Posted by EditorDavid from the welcome-home dept.
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."

A California Boy Was Kidnapped from a Park in 1951. He's Just Been Found Alive More | Reply

A California Boy Was Kidnapped from a Park in 1951. He's Just Been Found Alive

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  • in spanish too

  • ... [Spoiler Alert!] True Detective Season 3 [wikipedia.org] fiction.

  • Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @02:18PM (#64807995) Homepage

    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)

      by djo26 ( 1466671 )
      Agree. I have been following Fix The News for just that reason: https://fixthenews.com/ [fixthenews.com]

    • 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

      • Hence the old saying "If it bleeds it leads" that's been used to describe this idea for decades. I'm not surprised by the rest of your post either and while I suspect it has been studied, I'm inclined to say that it's true from anecdotal evidence. Some of the most upset/miserable people I know are the ones glued to the news and it's true regardless of political persuasion. I've certainly been sucked in at times myself.

  • A 6 year old just shrugged and switched families? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @02:20PM (#64808003)
    The article misses to ask about the elephant in the room: Why would a 6 year old child not attempt to contact or return to his former family? It seems highly unlikely that he just "forgot" he had a different family before the "candy"-incident. Either the story is complete BS or there was good reason for the child to not miss his original family, and the article just does not want to talk about any non-wholesome circumstances.
    • In the 1950s kids didn't have cell phones or the internet. He might not have known mother's telephone number or postal address. The people who kidnapped him may not have allowed him access to telephones or postage stamps. They may have kept him away from other people and means of communication until he came to think of his new family as his family and forgot about his original family.

      • Or maybe he liked his new family better.

      • Kids dont forget that sort of thing. The details maybe, but not the main facts.

        • Re: A 6 year old just shrugged and switched famili (Score:4, Informative)

          by mlyle ( 148697 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @03:46PM (#64808139)

          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.

        • How many children have you kidnapped and tested this theory on?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GFS666 ( 6452674 )

          Kids dont forget that sort of thing. The details maybe, but not the main facts.

          Uhmmm..No. No disrespect intended, but you are completely incorrect. My Mother left my Father when I was 7. She took all the kids except for me and left me with my Father. It was literally the most earth shattering thing that ever happened in my life and has always affected me. I have no memory of when she and my siblings left and the days that followed. My first memory afterwards is being in my Father's truck at night, listening to the radio as he and a friend worked on the mobile home trailer.

          Children's

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )

        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

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          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 t

        • Were you a small child in the early 1950s? This kid had only just moved to California and might well not yet have learned his phone number and address. He also didn't speak English, meaning that in the initial phase of his kidnapping, he might not have been able to communicate with people he came in contact with. Kids separated from their family at that age may have vague memories but they fade as time goes on and if their situation is not unpleasant, they may lose motivation to try to regain contact with t

        • The boys had recently immigrated with their mother and four other siblings from Puerto Rico

          So the numbers and address that he knew as a 6yo where most likely not the current one.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Hodr ( 219920 )

          Maybe you missed the part where it said they RECENTLY MOVED from Puerto Rico. Do you think they kept the same phone number and address?

      • In the 1950s a lot of people didn't even have a phone. In the 1970s a lot of people shared a single line and were supposed to pick up the receiver based on a morse-like ring pattern.

    • 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.

      • Smart is the wrong word. It's unlikely intelligence has changed. What can be done with that intelligence has, though.
        • That is actually currently unknown, all we know is that the results of IQ tests keep on increasing and the reason for it is under heavy debate so no way to speak one way or another.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hodr ( 219920 )

            The progress was almost entirely in areas where poor nutrition and lack of education impacted scores in the 19th century. In fact, within the US there has been a decline since the 1990s so it's entirely possible that scores are similar or below what they were in the 1950s.

            And on top of this, there have been changes over the years to "adjust" IQ scores according to meet other than strictly scientific goals. You can Google if you want to learn more about that, i'm not looking to start any food fights here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      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

      • well you know what you use, and if you are not very often calling your own home or if this even can be done easily by asking people to "call my home" instead of repeating the actual number then it is hard to remember it. Heck I struggle to remember my own cell phone number since I never use it.
    • Maybe it was "Your parents have asked me to take care of you for a while because they are going through an extreme difficulty(?) and didn't want you to suffer with them. But don't worry, they will reunite with you once the crisis(?) has passed". Years later followed up with "Your parents died". Yes, I'm having extreme difficulty trying to patch the hole you can drive a MACK truck through in this story with a somewhat plausable theory.

      • 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.

    • Well I mean, some people get adopted at 6 and forget. And 6 year olds tend to accept new information, since so much is new to them. Also some of them don't understand that adults can lie, nor understand the concept that they might lie about something like this.

      If he had been prepped with "we're going to have a new life after we move", and then the kidnappers are telling him "This is your home now, we're you're parents," and everyone new he meets is acting like that's the case (because they think it is), a

  • No explanation what the woman did with him? (Score:3)

    by blahbooboo ( 839709 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @02:21PM (#64808005)
    Granted this is definitely not slashdot material it is an interesting story So, Luis has no memory of who took him (age 6 isnt so young he wouldn't have any memory) and transferred him to another couple for raising? Furthermore, the couple that raised him had no relatives to explain where they got Luis?
    • I don't quite believe that a 6 year old could be brainwashed into forgetting who his parents are and believing he spent his entire life with the people who just kidnapped him. Or if he can, then I don't see how he could so easily reverse his beliefs and remember his real family at age 80. Something doesn't seem to add up? Well, OTOH it appears that that's exactly what happened here.
      • From an article in the latimes: âoe Alequin said that her uncle had some memories of the abduction and his trip to the East Coast, but when he questioned adults in his life, they did not give him answers. Albino wants to keep some of his experiences private and didnâ(TM)t want to speak to the media, she saidâ

    • The guy was found after his mom died, but just before his brother died, so I guess that's good. But he's lived the majority of his life without his blood family and seemingly had a decent life and there's no way to get that back which is a mix of good and bad.

      You know what pisses me off? Somebody took somebody else's 6 year old and we have absolutely no indication that the law is coming down on them in any way. Or that they're dead and the law can't. This is a huge, huge missing part of the story and t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by keltor ( 99721 ) *
        This gentleman is 79 and was abducted by a woman "in her 30s" which means 20s-50s, so she would be between 99 and 129. The average life expectancy for women born in 1925 was 61 years old. For women born in 1895, it was only 46 (childbirth). The chance of her being alive are zero.

        • Well there's a massive reading fail for me; I had it in my head he was in his late 50s. The 'retired' part didn't click because his career as a firefighter often comes with an early retirement.

  • Puerto Ricans or US citizens. When he moved from Puerto Rico to California, he did not immigrate he just moved. Itâ(TM)s a technicality, but itâ(TM)s somewhat important one that an editor should have caught.

  • Not tech, so it does not belong on Slashdot. (Score:3)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @03:54PM (#64808175)

    Turning Slashdot into a tabloid is contemptible. Yet another calculated step in wrecking the site the "editors" will never admit taking for that reason.

  • The boys had recently immigrated with their mother and four other siblings from Puerto Rico.

    You don't say people "immigrate" to California from Arizona, or Virginia, or Alsaka, or Puerto Rico, or any other part of the US.
    They just move there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by keltor ( 99721 ) *
      Both Merriam-Webster AND American Heritage do not limit the term "immigrate" to just countries:

      M-W: to enter and usually become established
      AH: To enter and settle in a country or region to which one is not native.

      So M-W uses it in the most vague of terms and AH uses region in addition to country. There's tons of usage of the term immigrate to discuss the Western migration of people from the East Coast of the US as well as the post Civil War migrations of people from the Southern US to the Northern US. It
  • Birth certificate, social security number?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Back in those days, kids didn't get SSNs. Birth certificates were not carefully tracked either. So obtaining one from a kid that died young would not have been a major problem. "Recently immigrated from Puerto Rico" would have made tracking even more difficult.

      • > "Recently immigrated from Puerto Rico" would have made tracking even more difficult.

        I mean... even today lots of Americans don't realize Puerto Ricans are Americans and can't actually 'immigrate'. Movement within the US is 'migrating' and to the average Joe, 'moving'.

        So back in the day, I can't imagine it was better.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          Right. But the issue is less the immigration or migration and more the state of record keeping in Puerto Rico. In 1945, there were backwater places in the continental USA that didn't keep good birth records.

  • ...for the California State Board of Equalization (their form of IRS) gets their hands on this guy and sends him a BIGLY bill for all the back taxes he owes the State.

    After all, it is California, and they are having budgetary shortfall problem again, and they are never ones to overlook an opportunity to tax you coming & going.

    Just wait for the entry & exit barriers to be erected at all California airports, complete with armed guards, and a sign saying:

    Pay Your State Taxes Here ... Even If You Are '

  • But this story illustrates an important *positive* use case for DNA testing. This was a consumer-grade test that led to solving a decades-old kidnapping. All indications are that DNA is far more often used for *good* purposes than bad.

    • >"But this story illustrates an important *positive* use case for DNA testing. This was a consumer-grade test that led to solving a decades-old kidnapping. All indications are that DNA is far more often used for *good* purposes than bad."

      There is a huge incentive not to disclose or share what might be done that is bad. Plus, one of the most major bad things is that this data hangs around FOREVER once it is taken, and can be used for bad things way into the future.

      Like most technological advancements, th

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