When she was just eight hours old, a woman who was assumed by the family to be a nurse swept her from her then sixteen-year-old mother’s arms. Her name, was Kamiyah Mobley, but that’s not who she was raised to be; she was raised, by Gloria Williams, to be Alexis Kelly Manigo, daughter of the former and Charles Manucho. The real Alexis, however, had died.

A week prior to abducting the child, Williams had miscarried Alexis in her third trimester. Gloria had already thrown a baby shower, and even received gifts with the child’s name monogrammed onto them. Distraught, Gloria took another African American child, before even telling her husband, or anyone, about her loss.

Suspicions rose around Alexis when she was eighteen, and repeatedly was turned down for jobs due to falsified documents; specifically, her social security number and birth certificate. Alexis asked her mother, and, supposedly, Gloria confused she was abducted. “We know that obviously there was conversation about her maybe not being her daughter,” Mike Williams, Sheriff of Jacksonville PD Said to People magazine on January 17th. “Did she confess completely to her, or did she just give her pieces of it? We are not quite sure at this point.”

But Kamiyah was, and is, considered one of the lucky ones. She was raised well, with no presence of sexual, physical, or mental abuse. Although her “parents” divorced, they appeared to make an effort to continue raising her and her “siblings” together. Not only that, but she was found, alive nonetheless. Hundreds and thousands of children abducted have never been found; of those that are, many were dead.

For now, Kamiyah has adjusted remarkably well. She was even able to reunite with her real parents, Shanara Mobley and Craig Aiken, and took the selfie shown above. She’s even been able to give an interview to Good Morning America.
If you ask her what her take on finding out? “When you find out you have another family out there, it’s just more love.”