A view of Jefferson Square Park in Oakland today.
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A boy who was kidnapped from an Oakland playground in 1951 has been found alive on the East Coast, a remarkable resolution to a mystery that has haunted his family for over half a century.
On Feb. 21, 1951, 6-year-old Luis Armando Albino was playing with his older brother Roger at Jefferson Square Park. The boys had recently immigrated with their mother and four other siblings from Puerto Rico. Life in California was not easy for the Albinos; to keep the family afloat, mother Antonia picked fruit by day and sewed gloves by night.
That afternoon, Luis and 10-year-old Roger walked down the block from their home at 730 Brush Street to play in the park. They were approached by a woman in her 30s, wearing a green bandana over her hair, who began chatting with Luis in Spanish. She promised she would buy him candy if he came along with her, and little Luis agreed to join her. Wary, Roger trailed the pair for a while before returning home to alert an adult to the strange encounter.
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A newspaper clipping from the 1966 Oakland Tribune about the kidnapping of Luis Albino, seen at right in a photograph taken around the time of his disappearance.
Oakland Tribune via Newspapers.com
Oakland police were called by frantic family members and a search was immediately launched. At first, investigators doubted Roger’s account, wondering if Luis had accidentally wandered into the bay and drowned. The Coast Guard was deployed to search the waters off Jack London Square. Though pressed repeatedly, Roger never changed his story about the unknown woman.
Every day, Antonia visited the Oakland police station for updates. Each day, they were no closer to finding Luis. Nevertheless, Antonia was convinced her son was alive. “She came once a week, then once a month, then at least once a year, to see the shake of the head, to have the answer ‘no’ translated for her although she could read it in the officers’ faces,” the Oakland Tribune wrote in 1966.
“All you have to do is look at this woman to know she’s gone through the tortures of the damned in these 15 years,” Oakland police Lt. Dominic DiFraia told the Tribune.
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Fifteen years after Luis went missing, the family renewed their search. He would now be 21, and they wondered if military service exams or other adult benchmarkers would resurface the long-lost boy. But despite their best efforts, including multiple trips to Puerto Rico where Antonia suspected Luis might have been taken, he was nowhere to be found.
“This is a rare situation when a boy disappears and doesn’t eventually show up — alive or dead,” DiFraia said in 1966. “I’d give an awful lot to find out why.”
A newspaper clipping from the 1966 Oakland Tribune about the kidnapping of Luis Albino.
Oakland Tribune via Newspapers.com
Decades passed. In 2020, Luis’ niece, Alida Alequin, took a DNA test on a whim, the Mercury News reported. The service returned several possible family members to the Oakland woman. One of them was a man who Alequin had never met. After some internet sleuthing, she began to suspect this man might be the missing uncle she’d heard so much about. She reached out to the man but didn’t hear back.
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Earlier this year, Alequin tried again. Armed with photos, she took her evidence to the Oakland Police Department’s missing persons unit. In short order, the FBI and California Department of Justice were also investigating Alequin’s lead. They discovered the man was living on the East Coast, had worked as a firefighter and served two tours in Vietnam with the Marine Corps. This week, the Mercury News first reported that a DNA test confirmed what Alequin suspected: This was Luis Albino.
In June, Luis flew to California to reunite with his family, among them his devoted brother Roger. The joyous meeting was also a fortuitous one; Roger died two months later.
“I think he died happily,” Alequin told the Mercury News. “He was at peace with himself, knowing that his brother was found.”
The mystery of Luis’ kidnapping still remains. For over 70 years, he lived on the East Coast believing he was the son of another couple. It’s not clear who those people are or if they had any relationship to the Albino prior to the kidnapping. Oakland police and the FBI did not respond to SFGATE’s requests for more information. The Mercury News reports the kidnapping investigation is ongoing.
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Sadly, Luis’ mother didn’t live to see her son again. She died in Oakland in 2005. She kept photographs of him with her until the day she died, a constant reminder of the lost boy that spurred Alequin to take up the search.
When Luis met Alequin for the first time this summer, he held her in an embrace. “Thank you,” he said, “for finding me.”
