Woman Finds Son Who Vanished 30 Years Ago

(Newser) - For 30 years, Kathy Amaya has been looking for her son, David, who went missing as a child. For that same amount of time, David has believed that same mother discarded him. That misconception persists no longer. As NBC 7 reports, David was abducted as a child by his father, who took him to Mexico where he was raised by his grandparents.

David, who speaks no English, knew all his life he was born in America, but wasn't aware of the truth of how he came to leave the country. As Kathy explains to WEAU, "One day my ex-husband came to my sister, she was watching him, and picked him up and never returned him. When I didn't hear from him I knew he took him to Mexico."

That truth surfaced after David tried to cross into the US on October 30. He had no papers and was detained in San Diego for two days, all the while insisting he was an American-which his birth certificate, issued in Chicago in 1976, ultimately proved. That led to a phone call to Kathy, who was told that someone named David Amaya-who she was told decades ago she couldn't report missing since he was in Mexico-had been stopped by Border Patrol.

Soon after, she confirmed it was her son. A San Diego ministry is raising money to facilitate a trip for David to Chippewa Falls, Wis., to see his mother, hopefully by Thanksgiving. Though the two speak no common language, they have communicated by phone. (In similar news, nine years later a missing Wis. girl has been found in Mexico.)

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