The family immediately called the police and the officers began searching. At first they did not believe Roger’s story and supported the theory that little Luis had run away and ended up in the nearby bay.

But Roger never changed his story and Antonia never stopped believing that her little boy was out there somewhere.

A 15-year analysis of the case, launched in 1966 by the Oakland Tribune described heartbreaking details of the desperate mother’s visits to the police station to get new information about her son.

“She came once a week, then once a month, then at least once a year, to see the head shaking, to have the answer ‘no’ translated, even though she could read it in the faces of the officials,” said the tribune wrote.

Dominic DiFraia of the Oakland police told the newspaper that Antonia Albino had undergone the “torture of the damned.”

In 1966, Luis Albino turned 21 and his family began a new phase of their search in the hope that he would appear in the official records as an adult.

They even traveled back to Puerto Rico because they thought he might have been taken there.

There was no trace.

DNA test “just for fun”

Alida Alequin is Luis’ niece, his sister’s daughter, and she said the family has never forgotten the little boy.

“The family has been thinking about him all this time,” Alequin told Mercury News.

“I always knew I had an uncle. We talked about him a lot. My grandmother carried the original article in her wallet and always talked about him. There was always a picture of him hanging in the family home.”

While that hope remained, the trail was long lost until a DNA test that Alequin did “just for fun” revealed a match with an uncle – across the country on the east coast of the United States.

She contacted him, but received no response and further searches did not yield any further clues.

But Alequin tried again this year, using newspaper clippings to solve a story that had haunted her family for 73 years.

Confirmation came from the FBI and the California Department of Justice, who received DNA from Luis and Alequin’s mother.

“In my heart I knew it was him,” Alequin said, “and when I got the confirmation, I let out a loud ‘YES!'”

In June of this year, Luis came home.

“Thank you for finding me,” he said to Alequin.

The retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran, now a father and grandfather himself, met with his family, including his brother Roger, who was the first to raise the alarm many years ago.

“They hugged each other and hugged each other really tightly and for a long time. They sat down and just talked,” Alequin said.

Roger died shortly afterwards “at peace with himself, knowing that his brother had been found.”

Their mother never lived to see the boys reunited; she died in 2005 still believing Luis was alive.

“She never forgot him,” Alequin said. “She always said he was still alive.”

“She had hope of seeing him. She never gave up that hope.”