A boy kidnapped 70 years ago has been found alive in the US

Thanks to an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings, relatives, with the help of police, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department, were able to locate a man who was kidnapped in 1951 when he was six years old. This was reported by the Associated Press on Sunday, September 22.

Luis Armando Albino was six years old in 1951 when he was kidnapped while playing in a park in Oakland, California. According to the agency, a woman lured six-year-old Albino out of an Oakland park where he was playing with his older brother and promised him she would buy him candy. Instead, the woman kidnapped the child and then took him to the East Coast, where he ended up with a couple who raised him as their own son.

Albino is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam. He later worked as a firefighter, said his niece, 63-year-old Alida Alekin.

"For more than 70 years, Albino remained missing, but he "was always in the hearts of the family and his picture hung in the homes of relatives," his niece said.

The realization that Albino might still be alive came in 2020 when, Alequin said, just for fun, she took an online DNA test. It showed a 22 percent match to a man who ended up being her uncle. Further searching at the time yielded no answers or any response to it, she said.

In early 2024, she and her daughters began searching again. During a visit to the Oakland Public Library, she looked at Oakland Tribune articles, including one with a photo of Louis and his brother Roger, that convinced her she was on the right track. That same day, she contacted Oakland police.

According to Alekin, investigators came to her mother's home on June 20 and informed them both that her uncle had been found. On June 24, with the assistance of the FBI, Luis traveled to Oakland with family members and met with Alekin, her mother, and other relatives. The next day, Alequin took her mother and uncle to Roger's home in California.

In April in the US, a dog that went missing last summer in San Diego, California, was found in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, more than 3,700 kilometers away. The found three-year-old dog was examined by a veterinarian. She noted that the dog was clean and well-fed when it was found.