Mom reunited with daughter 27 years after she was snatched as a toddler
A Mexican mom was reunited with her daughter 27 years after she was snatched from her as a 3-year-old.
Lorena Ramírez posed for pics with daughter Juana — herself now a 30-year-old mom — after a DNA test last year confirmed with 99.99% certainty that it was the daughter taken from a park in 1995.
“I never lost hope, I never stopped looking,” Ramírez told Spanish newspaper El Pais in October in an interview which has now resurfaced and been widely picked up.
“I couldn’t believe it, but when I saw her I knew, she was my daughter,” she said of the girl who reappeared after her dad had already died.
“I lost a three-year-old child and found a 30-year-old woman.”
The family had been on a “normal” trip to Bosque de Chapultepec park in Mexico City when Juana was taken while her parents were saying goodbye to other relatives, the mom recalled.
“I don’t know if it was a mother’s hunch, but I knew in that moment that my daughter had just been taken from me,” the mom said.
Her daughter — whose name was changed to Rocío Martínez by the couple accused of taking her — says she still remembers holding her parents’ hands before she was snatched.
As her distraught parents desperately tried to get authorities to raise a serious search, Martínez said she woke in a strange house about 30 miles from where her real family was.
She was also told had “new parents,” “new brothers,” a new name and even a new birthday — in October rather than the real one, June 16.
“I always knew that family was not my actual family,” she told the Spanish-language outlet in an interview that news agency Jam Press recently resurfaced.
“They treated me badly,” she said, telling El Pais it was too painful to discuss in detail.
Martínez said a neighbor confirmed that the woman raising her was not her real mother — which the pseudo-mom admitted herself during a fight when the snatched girl was around 12 or 13, she said.
“She told me that she had found me in Chapultepec,” she told El Pais.
After leaving home at 17, Martinez said she did not start looking for her real family until she was married.
Her husband encouraged her to research online about lost or stolen children — with her being struck by the photo of one stolen girl.
“There was such a strong physical resemblance I said to myself ‘I’m that girl,'” she said.
However, as there were no contact details with the photo, Martínez said “it took me another eight years before deciding to look for my family.”
Her real mom, meanwhile, had two other daughters — but never lost hope of finding the missing 3-year-old.
“Every time Juana’s birthday came around, I prayed to God for her to be OK and to give me the chance to see her again,” she said.
Martínez finally made an online appeal last August, sharing the photo of the missing youngster that she thought could be her.
“I got an answer right away,” she said, with one of her real sisters seeing it and getting in contact.
The Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the news last year, assisting in the DNA test and ultimate reunion.
“God gave us the opportunity to be together again,” Ramírez said.
“We got along from the beginning,” the mom added. “And from the first moment, I saw her as my daughter.”
Martínez, meanwhile, said she has long been estranged from the couple who raised her — but doesn’t “hold any grudge against them.”
The couple, only identified as Patricia and Antonio “N,” were arrested in March.
It is not clear when their case will go to trial.
