Woman Abducted as Infant Reunited With Parents

Internet connects long ago abducted daughter Carlina White to her real parents.

Carla White with parents Joy White and Carl Tyson, reunited in New York. Photo courtesy: New York Post

(SALEM, Ore.) - Few stories are more intense and rewarding than the ones that lead to a lost child's recovery. When this rare thing happens we are all reminded that hope is worth having.

The news of Carlina White's recovery hit the presses last week when she was reunited with her mother after 23-years.

Our interest in this particular case began when Missing Person Advocate Andrea Stroh contacted Salem-News.com in September 2009 asking if I would be interested in writing a story about the value of age-progression in missing children. That isn't the kind of offer I can resist, so with Andrea's help I wrote and published Age Progression: an Aid in Locating Stolen American Babies.

Our newsroom heard from Andrea again this week, only this time it was to make sure we knew that one of the missing abducted infants featured in the missing and abducted babies article has been located: Carlina Renae White, missing Aug.4 1987 for 23 years, was one of many children who had been included.

It stems from the hard work of charleyproject.org, one of the groups featured in our 2009 article.

Andrea says you don’t see this happen very often. It is rare. Yet she stresses that she believes in her heart that many children in these cases are still out there.

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Carlina White today

There are quite a few questions and some will likely be disclosed, some probably will not. That is fine, people deserve a right to privacy.

We do know that the woman who raised Carlina after she was kidnapped from a New York hospital in 1987; Ann Pettway, was declared a probation absconder. North Carolina authorities believe she is actively fleeing authorities.

Andrea Stroh works closely with these cases, she says there are many things this Carlina will have to address and consider.

"I don’t think we know, at this point what this young woman went through. But we are hearing reports in the media that she was raised by an abusive ‘mother’ who at one point beat her with a shoe, that other members of her family had to sometimes intervene to stop the abuse and screaming inflicted on her, and she never really knew what it was like to feel loved or have a real hug. This is horrible and may have caused psychological issues in and of itself."

It is true that we don’t know what her family whom she was abducted into was like, but even in the most dysfunctional families there is often a bond, Andrea points out, adding that it is human nature and there is nothing wrong with that.

Carlina's age progression from our 2009 article.

It will be hard for any person to get through an experience like this on their own.

"She needs a trained professional to help guide her and her family to know that all of her feelings are ok and she didn’t and hasn’t done anything wrong. I believe once she feels fully accepted, that she will be loved no matter what she thinks or feels. Then she can truly bond with her family, and build on a foundation of trust. If she can’t be herself and feels as if she has to keep secrets the relationship can’t progress in a normal way, and may not be able to progress past a certain point at all. This would be a travesty."

Carlina White was a 19-day old infant when she was swiped from Harlem Hospital in New York City, on the 4th of August 1987. Her mother brought her in because she had a fever. Neither could she nor anyone else have anticipated what would happen.

Carlina reportedly was raised her under the name of Nejdra Nance in Bridgeport, Connecticut. 23-years after being kidnapped in the most literal sense, Carlina White was living in Atlanta. A woman who saw her suspected that she could be Carlina, and reportedly told her she knew who her mother was. Soon they were reunited.

According to the SF Gate Blog:

What happened was that Carlina White started to realize her mother wasn't really her mother around her 16th birthday. When she asked, Cassandra told her that she wasn't her mother. It's not clear how she became Carlina's mother, and she's not talking. In the New York Daily News story, Carlina refers to her as "the lady."

At that point, Carlina started a search for her Mom, and found the 1987 missing persons report online. She then contacted authorities, who helped her track down her Mom.

Sad, wild, and it's over.