Imagine discovering that the person you called mom for 18 years of your life was nothing more than a kidnapper who abducted you as an infant.  Would you defend your abductor?

This is exactly the reality of North Carolina teen Kamiyah Mobley.  Officials arrested the woman she thought to be her mother, Gloria Williams, on Saturday in Walterboro, South Carolina.  She is being charged with kidnapping and interference with custody.

Eighteen years ago on July 10, 1998, in Jacksonville, Florida, Williams dressed up as a nurse and infiltrated the hospital where Mobley’s mother was giving birth to her.  Williams apparently took the baby from Shanara Mobley after an exhausting labor.  The young mother, Shanara Mobley, being only 16 at the time, described a woman wearing a blue smock with flowers and surgical gloves entering her hospital room and taking the baby to where she described as the nursing room.  Grainy surveillance footage captures the pseudo-nurse walking out of the hospital with infant Kamiyah wrapped in a pink and blue blanket.

It is believed that Williams abducted the child just after she had suffered a miscarriage of her own.  She claimed to be very distraught over the event and sought a baby of her own.  Obviously by any means necessary.

The abduction made national news.  The country was astonished by the story.  Shanara Mobley cried out on film for the local news channel, “Please bring back my baby!  If you were faking a pregnancy or you just can’t have any kids, how do you think I feel… That’s my first child.”  Authorities searched the hospital and surrounding areas. Helicopters were brought in and roadblocks were set up.  Hospitals in Jacksonville and beyond increased security in maternity wards.

Tips rolled in by the thousands after the kidnapping.  2,518 to be exact.  None of them led to anything substantial.  The Mobley’s situation seemed doomed.  Kamiyah’s mother concluded she would never see her daughter again.

It wasn’t until August of 2016 that an anonymous tip came from one of Kamiyah’s, renamed Alexis Kelli Manigo, friends who told police that Alexis knew she had been kidnapped.  Then, in November another tip was received that stated Gloria Williams confessed to stealing Alexis.

Alexis’ enlightenment about her true identity came when she was wanting to apply for her first job.  She asked her mom for the necessary paperwork, but her mother kept shrugging it off as if it weren’t important.

Alexis’ friend recalls, “Lexy didn’t have that, so she asked Ms. Gloria for it and Ms. Gloria kept brushing it off,” the friend, Arika Williams, claimed. “Lexy kept being hard on her mother, like, ‘Mama, where is my stuff? I want to get this job’ Then Miss Gloria just broke down and told her, ‘This is why right here, you can’t do this. I kidnapped you.'”

After this realization, the case-breaking tips unearthed the truth behind Gloria Williams and her abducted child who she named Alexis.  Gloria Williams was arrested the next day.

A video shows Alexis hugging and crying out to the woman she believed to be her mother.  She has been quoted with defending her as the only mom she has ever loved, saying, “She loved me for 18 years. She raised me for 18 years. I will always love her.”

Alexis has met her biological mother and family in her birthplace of Jacksonville, Florida.  She said that with her new family there is only more love in her life.  She is appreciative of her biological relatives and all the support they have given her in her time of crisis.

On Wednesday, Gloria made her first court appearance in the state of Florida, where her case has been extradited to.  She is being charged with first-degree kidnapping and third-degree custodial interface. Gloria remains in custody in the Duval County Jail on a bail set at $503,000.

The most remarkable aspect of Kamiyah’s story is the fact that she was oblivious to her true identity for 18 years.  It makes one ponder what it must be like to learn that news.  Any person could one day discover the person who has raised them is not really their parent.

I asked a student of Air Academy, Ahyo Falick, if he would defend his parents upon finding out they kidnapped him at birth, he stated, “I think I would defend them as my parents even though they broke the law to get me.  I would definitely be shocked to learn about it but I don’t think I would stop thinking of them as my parents.”

It is evident that the connection between a caretaker and a child is one of unbreakable character, no matter the circumstance.  This story, though tragic in many ways, is a testament to this eternal bond.