Long-Missing Man Taken to Mexico as Toddler Reunited with US Mother Marty Graham Reuters - Reuters
go to original November 25, 2013

David Amaya Barrick, 37, poses for a picture at a church in San Diego, California November 12, 2013. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

SAN DIEGO - A Chicago-born man, who went missing three decades ago as a toddler after his father took him to Mexico, has been reunited with his U.S. mother in California after a harrowing trek back to the United States.

David Amaya Barrick, now 37, was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents last month but freed after convincing authorities of his U.S. citizenship - only to vanish again for several days before turning up at a San Diego church.

The mother and son finally met each other this weekend for the first time since the son went missing in 1979, to find they have the same eyes and nose, share the same laugh, and both love plaid shirts - even if they no longer have a language in common.

"We have some catching up to do," Kathy Amaya, 60, told Reuters on Sunday through tears a day after the pair finally met face to face at the San Diego International Airport after she flew in from Wisconsin. "We're going to do that."

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