A six-year-old boy who was abducted from a California park in 1951 has miraculously been found alive more than 70 years later and reunited with his family, who never gave up hope.

It was February 21, 1951, when a woman lured little Luis Armando Albino away from his older brother, Roger, at a West Oakland park by offering him candy, CBS News reported.

The woman, whom Roger said wore a bandana and spoke Spanish to his Puerto Rican-born brother, then flew Luis to the East Coast, where a couple raised him as their son.

Luis’s niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin, told the Mercury News that the family always held the missing child in their hearts and had photos of him hanging up in their homes. His mother passed away in 2005 “but never gave up hope that her son was alive,” the CBS article said.

Shortly after the abduction, Oakland Tribune articles that the outlet obtained showed that police, soldiers from a local U.S. Army base, members of the U.S. Coast Guard, and other local officials conducted an extensive search of the Bay Area and its waterways.

Roger was interrogated “several times” and always maintained that his younger brother was kidnapped.

Everything began to change when Alequin did a DNA test in 2020 “just for fun” and unexpectedly found a man who was a 22-percent match. She did not receive any response from the man when she reached out, so the search did not immediately continue.

In 2024, Alequin and her daughters again picked up the search by viewing Oakland Tribune articles on microfilm at the local public library. One had a picture of her two uncles, Roger and Luis. This re-ignited her quest to find her missing relative, so she went to the Oakland Police Department with the information that she had found a DNA connection.

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

Investigators found the man who tested as a 22 percent match to Alequin on the East Coast, and he provided a DNA sample.

Alequin’s mother provided one, as well.

They turned out to be siblings.

Investigators told Alequin and her mother that Luis had been found on June 20.

“In my heart, I knew it was him, and, when I got the confirmation, I let out a big ‘YES!'” the niece recalled.

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

Luis fought in Vietnam with the U.S. Marine Corps, became a father and grandfather, and served as a firefighter during his life.

Just four days later, the FBI assisted Luis in coming out to California with his family to meet with the ones he lost seven decades ago. He met with Alequin, his sister, and other relatives in Oakland on the first day before seeing his older brother, Roger, at his Stanislaus County home the next day.

Alequin told the Mercury News that her long-lost uncle “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”