Luis Armando Albino was reunited with his family in June after a decades-long search
More than seventy years after being abducted as a child, a California man is reunited with his family.
Luis Armando Albino was just six years old when he was lured away by a woman while playing with his older brother Roger in a park in West Oakland on February 21, 1951.
According to CBS News, his niece Alida Alequin in Oakland conducted a search using an online ancestry test as well as old photos and newspaper articles that determined he lives on the East Coast.
Her efforts “played a critical role in the search for her uncle,” said Oakland police, who helped search for Albino along with the FBI and the Justice Department, the Mercury News reported.
“It was the best possible outcome the Oakland Police Department (OPD) could have hoped for, as this is what our officers strive for and strive for in every missing person case,” authorities said in a statement to PEOPLE.
“On March 18, 2024, a woman contacted the OPD Missing Persons Unit regarding the possible whereabouts and identity of her uncle, Luis Albino, who had been missing for more than 70 years. The woman informed our investigators that her online DNA test results matched an individual believed to be her uncle who was abducted in 1951,” the OPD added.
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Following Albino’s disappearance, local authorities launched a large-scale search operation in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard and soldiers from a local Army base, the OPD added to PEOPLE.
This involved a search in San Francisco Bay and other California waterways, reported The Guardianwhile his brother Roger Albino was repeatedly questioned by investigators about his story of how his sibling had been kidnapped from the park by a woman wearing a headscarf.
The first sign that Albino might be alive came after Alequin took an online DNA test in 2020 “for fun” and it showed a 22% match with a man being her uncle, KTUV reported. In February, she searched again and compared it with some old Oakland-Tribune Articles about Albino – including a photo – that she found in the library. She then contacted the police and a missing person report was opened.
“The resemblance was so great; how much he looked like my other uncles,” Alequin told KUTV. “Then another picture where he looked so much like my grandmother, it made me shudder and I thought, ‘There’s something there.'”
On June 20, Alequin learned from police that Albino, now a grandfather and retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran, had been tracked down on the East Coast.
“In my heart I knew it was him, and when I got the confirmation I let out a loud ‘YES!'” she said, according to Mercury News.
“We didn’t start crying until the investigators had already left,” Alequin added. “I took my mother’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was beside myself with joy.”
This case remains under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact the OPD Missing Persons Unit at 510-238-3641.
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