Woman finds birth mother after 23 years

A woman stolen as an infant from a hospital crib two decades ago spent Thursday at a Manhattan hotel with her long-lost mother as investigators sought the evidence they need to identify and arrest her kidnapper.

"I'm so happy. At the same time, it's a funny feeling because everything's brand new. It's like being born again," said the woman, named Carlina White by her parents but raised Nejdra Nance in Bridgeport, Conn.

No suspects were ever identified in White's 1987 disappearance from Harlem Hospital as a 19-day-old infant. The hospital had no surveillance video. Her parents left the hospital to rest after the baby was admitted in the middle of the night with a high fever. She was missing when they came back.

The parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, said a woman who looked like a nurse had comforted them at the hospital. She disappeared afterward and apparently never worked there, family said.

As the years went by, it turned out, the best investigator was Carlina White herself. She had long suspected she was at least adopted because the person who raised her, a woman who went by the name Ann Pettway, could never provide her with a birth certificate. She didn't look like anyone she lived with, police and her family said. And Pettway was abusive, family said.

A telephone message left for Pettway, who has had recent addresses in Bridgeport and Raleigh, N.C., wasn't returned.

Periodically, Carlina White would check the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, looking through photos of missing infants in Connecticut, she told the New York Post. She left Connecticut for Atlanta years ago and has a 5-year-old daughter, her family said.

Meanwhile, Joy White never gave up hope that she would find her firstborn. "She always knew she was alive," said Lisa White-Heatley, Carlina White's aunt.

On Jan. 4, White, now 23, checked the website again, but searched this time through New York's missing children, and saw a baby photo that looked nearly identical to hers, police said. She contacted the site, which contacted Joy White. The two exchanged photos and talked. After a DNA test, it was all confirmed.

Authorities are looking at whether federal officials should take over because the statute of limitations may have expired in New York, said chief NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. There is no limitation in federal missing children cases.