Alta Apatenco was just a teenager when she had her first daughter, Malissa in 1969.
She adored her daughter, and she loved watching her meet all the milestones and get bigger and cuter every day.
When little Melissa was 21 months old, Apatenco put an ad in the local newspaper looking for a babysitter. A woman replied and they arranged for the stranger to babysit the baby on August 23, 1971, without the two women having ever met before.
Sadly, when Apatenco returned to her Fort Worth, Texas, home, little Melissa was not there.
The pretend babysitter had abducted the toddler, leaving the family shattered.
At the time, the story made the news and the authorities even considered the possibility of Apatenco being a suspect in her daughter’s disappearance.
For the years that followed, Melissa’s biological parents were heartbroken. Alta went through severe depression, while at the same time, she felt guilty for her daughter’s abduction.
As for Melissa, she grew up only 20 minutes away from her biological family without even knowing of their existence.
You see, she grew up as Melanie Miyoko, raised by a mother who obviously abused her, surrounded by two older children, who she believed were her biological brothers.
However, Melissa never felt she belonged in what she was told was her family.
She was treated weirdly by her “mother”, who never let her go outside and play like her siblings. The woman argues that Melissa could not follow the other children in their outdoor activities because she had been born at home and she had some kind of brain damage.
Melissa felt that her mother didn’t want her. She was even feeling guilty for not having been born a boy.
“I just thought she had two boys and she had me, and maybe she didn’t want a little girl. Maybe she wished that I was born a boy, and I used to wonder, ‘Why did she even have me if she didn’t want me?'” the now-53-year-old woman told People.
At the age of 15, Melissa decided she couldn’t stand the abusive environment she lived in and she ran away from home.
As she explains, she had to live on the street and “do what she had to do” in order to survive.
Later on, Melissa got married and had three children with her husband. One of her children is actually responsible for her being reunited with her biological family.
One of her children took a DNA test as her biological father happened to do. It was a match.
After that, it all happened so quickly and the whole story just unfolded rapidly.
Only last month, Melissa was reunited with her parents and younger siblings, who had never lost hope of finding their long-lost sister.
It was a heart-melting moment for everyone involved.
From now on, they’ll just try to make up for the lost time and make sure to be there for one another because they all need it so much.
Watch Alta and Melissa tell their story in the video below.
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