'I Thank God Today': Teen Kidnapped As Newborn Reunites With Birth Family
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (CBSNewYork) -- As one family is ripped apart by the gravity of a crime committed nearly two decades ago, another is learning to heal.
On Saturday, Kamiyah Mobley was reunited with her birth parents for the first time.
"Trying to process. It's been 18 years. It's going to be hard to make that up," her father Craig Allen said.
Up until now, the teenager had lived her life as Alexis Manigo.
As a newborn, she was stolen from her mother's arms in a Jacksonville, Florida hospital, snatched by a woman posing as a nurse. Gloria Williams was the only mother the girl ever knew, but now she's behind bars.
Mobley's family is overjoyed this cold case turned hot.
"First meeting was beautiful, it was wonderful. It couldn't have went better," Allen said.
"I said, 'Lord, let it be my grandbaby.' I had no idea what I was saying, but I thank God today, I thank God today," her grandmother, Velma Aiken, said.
As the years passed, investigators received hundreds of tips about the baby who was kidnapped. Recently, two leads brought them to South Carolina, and a DNA test revealed the truth.
"She had an inclination beginning probably a couple of months ago that she may have been involved in this in some way," Sheriff Mike Williams said.
Her story is now sending shock waves.
"I had chills just to think after all this time they found this baby," former UF health nurse Dorothy Rivers said.
Rivers never forgot the disturbing crime.
"I was a nurse in the labor delivery unit at the time. I was on duty the night that her mother came into delivery," she said.
Her hope that baby Kamiyah would be found matched that of the girl's own mother.
"That would be the happiest thing in the world right now to hold my baby," Mobley's mother said in 1998.
It's a wish that has finally come true.
Family members of Gloria Williams said they had no idea the girl was stolen. In 1998, Williams suffered a miscarriage, which she kept secret, before snatching the baby.
What's next for Mobley? Her father says the future as to where she would like to live is up to her.
