Jump to content
society

Mom Reunites With Kidnapped Son After 21 Years Apart


LebaneseDude

Featured Posts

LebaneseDude

Via HuffPo

Steve Hernandez tenderly wiped tears from his mother’s face. They were standing in an austere room in the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office. Maria Mancia couldn’t stop crying as she wrapped her arms around her son.

It was their first embrace in 21 years — a long-delayed reunion that Mancia had once feared impossible. 

The last time Mancia, 42, had seen Hernandez was in 1995 when he was just 18 months old. She’d returned to her Rancho Cucamonga, California home one day to find the place ransacked and her child missing.

Hernandez’s father, who she lived with, had kidnapped the boy.

575a4cf72200002e00f80346.jpeg

“That became the only photograph she had of Steve for the last 21 years,” investigator Karen Cragg of the San Bernardino County district attorney’s child abduction unit, told The Associated Press.

Then in February, Cragg and her colleague, Michelle Faxon, received a tip that Hernandez, now 22, and his dad were possibly living in Puebla, Mexico. The elder Hernandez had gone missing, said Cragg, and the investigators used that as an excuse to start a dialogue with his son.

In May, DNA samples from both Hernandez and Mancia were sent to a Department of Justice lab for testing. Neither mom nor son had been informed of the test so as to avoid any disappointment, the investigators said. But weeks later, incredible news emerged: The samples were a match.

Cragg and Faxon drove to Mancia’s house to break the good news.

“It was like she didn’t believe us at first,” Cragg told AP. “She began to cry. She said she couldn’t believe he was still alive.”

On Thursday, Mancia and her son were reunited in the DA’s office.

“Now this anguish I’ve carried is gone now that I have my son back,” Mancia told KABC-TV. “I spent 21 years looking for him not knowing anything.”

575a4da42200002e00f80347.jpeg?cache=aavh

tumblr_o3b8mfGLAJ1tl1wfio1_500.gif 

Edited just now by LebaneseDude.
Link to post
Share on other sites

FATCAT

I wish there was a video of her learning they'd found him. It'd cry my eyes out.

This kitten over here (meow)
Link to post
Share on other sites

Erotica

Wow, 21 years. Good thing there's not a video of the reunion. I would've spent the rest of the day crying :diane:

Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another
Link to post
Share on other sites

weed

What a terrible dad... It's nice they're finally back together 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Lion Heart

;( 

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
Link to post
Share on other sites

Michelle

I can't imagine how they must be feeling and have went through. 😢

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...