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When the Fb message that challenged her total life’s story arrived earlier this month, Melanie Walden refused to consider it. “There’s no approach that might be me,” she advised the individuals who despatched it.
However the message, from two ladies who mentioned they have been her sisters and a person who mentioned he was her father, insisted that she had been kidnapped as a 1-year-old in 1971 and that that they had spent 5 many years, almost their total lives, trying to find her. And so they had DNA proof.
Ms. Walden, 53, who cleans homes and her native church, was settled in her life in Fort Value, after a number of marriages and three kids. “I couldn’t consider such a factor,” she mentioned in an interview Tuesday.
The ladies, Sharon Highsmith and Rebecca Del Bosque, and the person, Jeffrie Highsmith, advised Ms. Walden that her actual identify was Melissa Highsmith — “Child Melissa” within the lacking posters — and that she had been taken away by a lady posing as a babysitter in Fort Value all these years in the past.
After many years of fruitless investigations, false leads and disappointments, the household was notified on Nov. 6 a couple of DNA match that confirmed Mr. Highsmith had a grandchild he didn’t learn about. It was one among Ms. Walden’s kids. The match was primarily based on samples submitted to 23andMe, the genetic testing firm, in line with the Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Kids.
Sharon Highsmith, 45, mentioned on Monday that Ms. Walden advised them that she thought they have been making an attempt to rip-off her. She mentioned she would pray for them. However then Ms. Walden began studying articles concerning the Highsmith household. The lady within the lacking poster had a birthmark on her again. So did Ms. Walden. Her husband studied the newborn images on the household’s Fb web page. Quickly she had a change of coronary heart, she mentioned.
Ms. Walden mentioned she then requested the lady who had raised her — the lady she thought was her mom — about her actual identification. Sure, she was advised, she had paid $500 for her in 1972. She was Child Melissa, the lady mentioned.
Additional DNA testing confirmed it. At a church in Fort Value on Saturday, Ms. Walden met along with her father, Mr. Highsmith, and her mom, Alta Apantenco, 73, in a tearful reunion full of hugs and prayer. They gave interviews to an area TV station, and the story was picked up by information shops world wide.
“It was very emotional,” Ms. Walden mentioned in an interview. “One of many first issues that got here to my thoughts was, ‘I lastly have a mom and a father that need me, and so they love me. I lastly have people who love me.’”
“I couldn’t consider it,” Ms. Apantenco advised CBS 11 of Fort Value. “I believed I’d by no means see her once more.”
Ms. Walden mentioned that she can be altering her identify again to Melissa Highsmith and even up to date her Fb web page to replicate that.
It was unclear who kidnapped Child Melissa, or how the lady who raised her turned her guardian. Ms. Walden wouldn’t identify her.
Beneath the identify Melanie Miyoko, she grew up and attended Southwest Excessive Faculty in Fort Value, the place she was a member of the Class of 1989, in line with the yearbook.
She additionally confronted some struggles. She mentioned she ran away from her new household when she was 15.
“I had an abusive childhood,” she mentioned. “I used to be looking for a greater life.”
Within the Nineties, when she was in her 20s and often known as Melanie Gaige, a married identify, she was arrested no less than 4 instances and charged with misdemeanors associated to prostitution, in line with Texas prison information. She had no training or expertise, she mentioned, including: “I did the one factor that I might do. I labored the streets.”
Throughout these years, she gave start to 3 kids. One in every of her sisters mentioned that each one three had been put up for adoption. Ms. Walden mentioned she later turned her life round, turned a non secular individual and labored quick meals jobs and cleansing church buildings.
Many questions stay concerning the abduction itself. The Highsmith household remains to be urgent for a police investigation.
In an announcement on Monday, the Fort Value Police Division mentioned that it was “overjoyed” that the household had discovered Melissa, however the division didn’t reply to questions concerning the abductor. It mentioned that it could proceed to research the case, however mentioned that the prison statute of limitations expired in 2007.
The kidnapping occurred on Aug. 23, 1971, in line with the Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Kids. Ms. Apantenco, who was 22 and dealing as a waitress, wanted somebody to observe her daughter. After inserting a babysitter’s advert within the newspaper, Ms. Apantenco organized for the lady to select up Melissa, who was 21 months previous, from her roommate whereas she was at work, the middle mentioned. Ms. Apantenco by no means met the lady. When she didn’t return with Child Melissa, Ms. Apantenco known as the police.
Child Melissa was final seen carrying a pink gown with white sandals, in line with the Nationwide Lacking and Unidentified Individuals System. She had hazel-brown eyes and brown hair, and weighed 26 kilos, in line with the database.
The police investigations proved futile. The household mentioned Ms. Apantenco even confronted accusations that she had damage or killed the kid herself. Because the years handed, the Highsmiths took issues into their very own palms.
Ms. Highsmith and Ms. Del Bosque, 48, bear in mind their dad and mom chasing leads in Texas even after their household moved to Illinois within the late Seventies.
“Each time they did they’d come again disillusioned,” Ms. Del Bosque, mentioned on Monday. “It was actually heartbreaking for me and for our household. It was very emotionally draining.”
Jeff Highsmith, who was born after his sister was kidnapped, and his spouse employed a non-public investigator to seek for leads on Melissa’s whereabouts. Additionally they created a Fb group, “Assist discover Melissa Highsmith,” to search for any suggestions. (The group, which has grown to greater than 6,500 members through the years, has been renamed “We Discovered Melissa!!!”)
Through the years, three ladies who believed they could be Melissa had reached out to Jeff Highsmith, however DNA assessments got here again exhibiting they weren’t her, the middle mentioned.
“We simply by no means gave up the hope,” Ms. Del Bosque mentioned. “We simply actually united as a household to maintain pushing.”
The breakthrough got here earlier this 12 months, with the daddy’s DNA match with the unknown grandchild. Lisa Jo Schiele, a scientific laboratory scientist and an newbie genealogist, mentioned Tuesday that she was requested by the household this month to reply the query, “Is that this what we expect it’s?”
Ms. Schiele pored by way of the information and contacted a genetic relative of Ms. Walden’s on Ancestry.com who gave her sufficient data to dig by way of public information to determine her in about two hours. That’s when the household despatched the Fb message.
Whereas Ms. Walden has now met her start dad and mom, her brother and one other sister, Victoria Garner, she has but to satisfy Ms. Del Bosque, of Chicago, or Ms. Highsmith, who lives in Madrid. They plan to satisfy at Christmas in Fort Value.
“Her life wasn’t what she thought it was,” Ms. Highsmith mentioned of her rediscovered sister. “What Melissa needs proper now’s to take pleasure in being reunited with a household that loves her, a household that by no means stopped searching for her and a household that has discovered her.”
Ms. Walden agreed. “I really feel like I’ve had a second probability at life.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis. Amanda Holpuch contributed reporting.
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