A boy who was taken from a playground in Oakland in 1951 was found alive on the East Coast. This is a very strange ending to a story that has been bothering his family for more than fifty years.
On February 21, 1951, Luis Armando Albino, then 6 years old, was at Jefferson Square Park with his bigger brother Roger. The boys moved not long ago from Puerto Rico with their mother and four other brothers.
The Albinos had a hard time in California. To make money for her family, Antonia picked fruit during the day and sewed gloves at night.
Luis and Roger, who was 10, walked down the block from their home at 730 Brush Street to the park that afternoon to play. Their way was blocked by a woman in her 30s with a green scarf over her hair.
She started speaking Spanish with Luis. Little Luis agreed to go with her because she said she would buy him candy if he did. Roger kept an eye on the two for a while before going home to tell an adult about the strange meeting.
Family members in Oakland called the cops in a panic, and a search began right away. At first, investigators did not believe Roger’s story. They thought Luis might have fallen into the bay by mistake and drowned.
The Coast Guard was sent to search the area around Jack London Square. Roger never changed his story about the unknown woman, even when he was pushed many times.
Antonia went to the Oakland police station every day to find out what was going on. They were getting farther away from finding Luis every day. Antonia was still sure her son was still alive.
As time went on, she came at least once a year, first once a month, then once a week to see the shake of the head and have the word “no” translated for her, even though she could see it on the officers’ faces.
Oakland police Lt. Dominic DiFraia told the Tribune, “Just look at this woman, and you will know she is been through the tortures of the damned in these 15 years.”
The family looked for Luis again fifteen years after he went missing. Now that he was 21, they were curious if military service exams or other tests of adults would help them find the long-lost boy.
But they looked everywhere for Luis, even going to Puerto Rico more than once because Antonia thought he might have been taken there. But they could not find him.
In 1966, DiFraia said, “It is not often that a boy goes missing and does not come back, alive or dead.” “I would give a lot to know why.”
Years went by. The Mercury News said that Alida Alequin, Luis’s niece, took a DNA test as a joke in 2020. The service gave the Oakland woman a list of possible family members.
One of them was a man Alequin had never met. It was not until she looked into this man on the internet that she thought he might be her lost uncle. She tried to get in touch with him but did not hear back.
In the beginning of this year, Alequin tried again. She took pictures of her proof to the missing people unit of the Oakland Police Department. Soon, the FBI and the California Department of Justice began to look into Alequin’s tip as well.
They found out that the man lived on the East Coast, had been a firefighter, and had been in the Marine Corps for two tours in Vietnam. This week, the Mercury News was the first to report that a DNA test proved what Alequin already knew: this was Luis Albino.
In June, Luis took a plane to California to see his family again. His loving brother Roger was there with him. It was both happy and lucky that they met; Roger died two months later.
Alquin told the Mercury News, “I think he died happy.” “He felt good about himself because he knew his brother had been found.”
The kidnapping of Luis is still a secret. He thought he was the son of someone else for more than 70 years and lived on the East Coast. There is no information about who those people are or if they knew the Albinos before they were taken.
When SFGATE asked the FBI for more information, they did not reply. In a statement, the Oakland Police Department said that they are still looking into the case. They asked anyone with information to call their missing persons unit at 510-238-3641.
Luis’s mother did not get to see her son again, which was sad. In 2005, she passed away in Oakland. Pictures of him were always with her until the day she died. They reminded her of the lost boy and made Alequin start the search.
It was this summer when Luis met Alequin for the first time. He hugged her. He said, “Thank you for finding me.”
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