Losing your child to a kidnapping is almost unimaginable to consider.
Finding her after five decades is almost crazier still.
A family in Fort Worth, Texas, has been reunited with their daughter who was kidnapped as a baby more than five decades ago thanks to a DNA match from the ancestry service 23andMe, the family announced Sunday.
Melissa Highsmith was just 22-months old in 1971 when she was allegedly abducted by a woman who was hired to babysit her, according to posts by the family over the years.
Highsmith – raised with the name Melanie – has lived in Fort Worth for much of her life, never knowing she was missing, according to CNN affiliate KTVT.
Fifty-one years is a long time. Better late than never.
The circumstances surrounding Melissa's disappearance are terrible and infuriating:
At the time of Highsmith's disappearance, her mother said she put an ad in the paper looking for a babysitter to care for her baby while she worked, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Apantenco said a woman responded to the ad, offering to watch Melissa at her home, the newspaper reported. When the woman arrived to pick up the baby, she said, Apantenco's roommate was looking after the child. The roommate handed the baby to the woman, she told the paper, and the woman never returned.
