A man who was kidnapped when he was 6 years old while playing in a California park in 1951 has been found 7 decades later thanks to the help of an online parentage test, old photos and newspaper clippings.

As the Guardian reports, the Bay Area News Group reported Friday that Luis Armando Albino’s niece in Oakland — with the help of police, the FBI and the Justice Department — located her uncle living on the US East Coast.

Albino, a father and grandfather, is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, according to his niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin.

The woman found Albino and reunited him with his family in California in June. Albino caught up and saw his brother alive for the last time before the latter died.

The kidnapping

On February 21, 1951 a woman lured the six-year-old Albino from the park in West Oakland, where he was playing with his older brother, and promised in Spanish that she would buy him candy.

The woman kidnapped the Puerto Rican-born boy, taking him to the East Coast, where he ended up with a couple who raised him as if he were their own son, the news group reported. Officials and family members did not say where on the East Coast he lives.

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

His mother died in 2005 but never lost hope that her son was alive.

Oakland police acknowledged that Alequin’s efforts “played an integral role in finding her uncle” and that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for.”

In an interview with the news group, she said her uncle “hug me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me,’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”

Oakland Tribune articles from the time reported that police officers, soldiers from a local military base, the Coast Guard and other city employees were involved in a massive search for the missing boy. San Francisco Bay and other waterways were also searched, according to the articles. His brother, Roger Albino, was questioned several times by investigators who reported a woman with a bandana around her head taking his brother.

How his niece found him

The first inkling that her uncle might still be alive came in 2020 when, “just for fun,” Alequin said, she took an online DNA test. She showed a 22% match with a man who eventually turned out to be her uncle. A further inquiry at the time “yielded” no answers or response from him, he said.

Early this year, she and her daughters started looking again. On a visit to the Oakland Public Library she looked at microfilms of Tribune articles – including one that had a picture of Luis and Roger – that convinced her she was on the right track. He went to Oakland police the same day.

Investigators eventually agreed that the new evidence was significant and opened a new missing persons case. Oakland police said last week the missing persons case was closed, but police and the FBI believed the abduction investigation should remain open.

Luis was on the east coast and provided a DNA sample, as did his sister, Alequin’s mother.

On June 20, investigators went to her mother’s house, Alequin said, and told them both that her uncle had been found.

“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin said. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’

On June 24, with the help of the FBI, Luis came to Oakland with family members and met with Alequin, her mother, and other relatives. The next day Alequin drove her mother and uncle to Roger’s home in Stanislaus County, California.

“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, big hug. They sat down and talked,” he said, discussing the day of the abduction, their military service and more.

Luis returned to the east coast but returned again in July for a three-week visit. It was the last time she saw Roger, who died in August.

Alequin said her uncle did not want to speak to the media.

“I was always determined to find him and who knows, with my story out there, it might help other families go through the same thing,” Alequin said. “I would say: don’t give up.”