6-year-old boy kidnapped from Oakland found alive 70 years later

An Oakland niece is celebrating after decades of perseverance helped her family reunite with her uncle, who was abducted from a West Oakland park in 1951.

Luis Armando Albino was 6 years old when he was playing at Jefferson Square Park at Seventh Street and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way, with his older brother Roger on Feb. 21, 1951. A woman lured Albino from the park, promising the boy in Spanish that she would buy him candy. 

The woman abducted and took him to the East Coast, and raised him there as her son. That woman has since died, family members said. 

Now, more than seven decades later, Albino has been found thanks to help from an online ancestry test, old photos and newspaper clippings.

The East Bay Times first reported the stunning story. 

In an interview Friday with KTVU, Albino’s niece, Alida Alequin, 63. shared some details of that story, including the fact that her uncle remained missing despite the efforts of the Oakland Police Department and the FBI.

His family never gave up searching.

Alequin was determined to find him and got a big break after taking a DNA test online in 2020 "just for fun," matching with a man on the East Coast.

The test showed a 22 percent match with a man who eventually turned out to be her uncle. A further search at the time yielded no answers or any response from him, she said.

"My daughter found a lot of pictures of this man, and we started comparing," Alequin said. "The resemblance was so strong; how much he looked like my other uncles. And then another picture where he looked so much like my grandmother, that one gave me chills, and I said ‘there’s something here." 

Albino's mother died in 2005 but never gave up hope that her son was alive and that he would be found.

"I think she's happy, honestly, she was there guiding me too," Alequin said of her late grandmother to KTVU. "It's just the way everything worked out, it's unbelievable."

Albino was located on the East Coast and provided a DNA sample, as did his sister, Alequin’s mom. After they found Albino, they compared his DNA to Alequin's mother and her uncle Roger, and confirmed it was Luis, the family told  KTVU.

Alequin was convinced she had a lead and took that information to OPD, who then took it to the FBI.

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.

Oakland Tribune articles from the time reported police, soldiers from a local Army base, the Coast Guard and other city employees joined a massive search for the missing boy. San Francisco Bay and other waterways were also searched, according to the articles. 

Investigators eventually agreed the new lead was substantial, and a new missing persons case was opened. 

Oakland police said last week that the missing persons case is closed, but they and the FBI consider the kidnapping a still-open investigation.

His brother, Roger Albino, was interrogated several times by investigators but stood by his story about a woman with a bandanna around her head taking his brother.

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

Albino is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam. 

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

"They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked," she said, discussing the day of the kidnapping, their military service and more.

Luis returned to the East Coast but came back again in July for a three-week visit. It was the last time he saw Roger, who died in August.

Alequin said her uncle and his brother Roger were working on making up for lost time.

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.