The woman abducted as a baby from a Jacksonville hospital nearly 18 years ago was reunited with her biological father on Saturday.
Kamiyah Mobley met her birth parents on Saturday at the police department in Walterboro, the South Carolina city where she was raised under a false name, multiple media outlets reported.
Craig Aiken, Mobley's biological father, drove up from Jacksonville, Florida, to Walterboro to meet his long-lost daughter for the first time.
"Just for anybody that's lost hope, just keep hope alive, just keep praying, keep fighting," he said. "If it happened to me, it can happen to anybody."
Mobley was only eight hours old in 1998 when she was taken from a Jacksonville hospital by a woman posing as a nurse. A massive search and thousands of tips produced nothing until DNA evidence proved Mobley's lineage.
Police this week charged Gloria Williams, 51, of Walterboro with kidnapping. She will be extradited to Florida to face charges. Williams had raised as Mobley as her daughter and named her Alexis Manigo.
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After the reunion, Craig Aiken came out of the police station and shared his thoughts on the touching encounter.
"The first meeting was beautiful. It was wonderful,'' Aiken said. "It's hard to put into words right now. We are just trying to process it— 18 years. It's going to be hard to make that up. I just can't describe it.''
Aiken said it's not yet clear what's next for his family, and Kamiyah will decide whether or not she will visit Florida. He said he would tell other parents with missing children to keep hope alive.
