A man who went missing at just six years old in 1951 has been found alive more than 70 years later, living on the East Coast. The decades-long search came to an end after the man’s niece took a DNA test that led her to her missing uncle. 

The man, Luis Armando Albino, emigrated to California from Puerto Rico as a young child along with his mother and four siblings. One day, while playing at an Oakland, California park with his brother Roger, Mr. Albino was approached by a young, Spanish-speaking woman who promised to take him to buy candy if he walked with her. Roger went home to tell an adult about his younger brother walking off with the stranger, according to SFGATE. 

For decades, Mr. Albino’s mother searched for her young son. After 15 years, when Mr. Albino would have been 21 years old, his mother began searching military records and other possible leads to find any clues about where her son may have gone all those years earlier. She even traveled to Puerto Rico to see if he had been abducted back to the island.

Ultimately, all of the Albino family’s efforts and the searches conducted by Oakland police yielded no clues, and the case went cold. 

It wasn’t until 2020 when Mr. Albino’s niece, Alida Alequin, took a DNA test to learn about her ancestry and her family members. When she got the results, she discovered that she had a close relative living on the East Coast, who she suspected could be her long-lost uncle. 

Ms. Alequin reached out to the man shortly after receiving her DNA test results in 2020, though she did not get a response. In 2024, she went to the Oakland police to turn over the results of the DNA test along with family pictures to point them in the direction of the man. The FBI got involved, and it was later disclosed that it was, in fact, her missing uncle. 

Mr. Albino was able to return to California to see his family, including his brother Roger, who passed away just two months after the reunion with his younger brother. “I think he died happily,” Ms. Alequin told the Mercury News. “He was at peace with himself, knowing that his brother was found.”

Mr. Albino — who served two tours in Vietnam as a Marine and was working as a firefighter when his niece found him — says he was raised on the East Coast by a couple who he believed to have been his real parents. The FBI told the Mercury News that the investigation into the kidnapping is ongoing.