The brothers reunited after 73 years. The youngest was kidnapped as a child by a foreign woman to the other side of the US

The bitter story began in February 1951, when the kidnappers seized Luis, then six years old, who was playing with his ten-year-old brother Roger in a park in Oakland , California. It was shortly after their family came to the US from Puerto Rico.

Luis didn’t speak English yet. A strange woman took him out of the park by promising him sweets in Spanish. Luis followed her in trust and she disappeared for more than seven decades.

At the time, California authorities had turned over almost every stone in the area to find the boy. Police, soldiers, and Coast Guard were looking for him, but it seemed that the ground was giving in to Luis.

The kidnapping drew him to the other side of the United States. According to the page The United States today he ended up with a couple who raised the boy as if he were their own son.

Luis’s memories of his biological relatives gradually faded, although a sense of emptiness remained in his life. But the real family in California did not forget.

Luisa’s mother asked the missing persons office almost every day if they had any news for her. She prayed and still believed that her son was alive. By the time the case was adjourned for long, the woman died in 2005 at the age of 92.

But Luis’s niece, Alida, his niece, also started the search on her own. Four years ago, she had a DNA test done, apparently just out of curiosity, the newspaper wrote Western France. She soon found out that there was a man living on the east coast of the US whose DNA matched hers by 22 percent.

This year, Alida got another clue when she found a picture of this man on the internet. She compared it to photos of Luis as a child and was convinced that she had finally found her long lost uncle. The niece contacted the FBI about the results of her investigation, and her agents then located Luis in New York.

In June there was a meeting where tears of emotion flowed. Even Luis was not immune to them, even though he is a hardened firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who was deployed for two years in Vietnam. “They hugged each other tightly. Then they sat down and talked. About the day Luis was kidnapped, about his military service, about everything,” Alida described the brothers’ meeting.

In July, the sisters met again when Luis flew to California for three weeks. But that was their last reunion, as Roger died in August at the age of 83. “I believe he left happy. He is happy to find his brother,” said Alida.