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Video After The Jump

In what can only be described as a miracle, a mother is reunited with the daughter that was kidnapped 23 years ago.

On August 4, 1987, Joy White took her three week old baby, Carlina to a Harlem hospital because the baby was suffering from a very high temperature.

White went home to rest after the baby was admitted.   When she came back the next day her daughter had vanished.

White hoped and prayed for the safe return of her daughter, but that didn't happen until over 2 decades later.

Carlena became suspicious of the woman raising her because she couldn't produce her birth certificate.

That suspicion led her to start searching the web for answers. She came across the website of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Digging further she found a story of a baby taken from a hospital 23 years ago.

Carlena called the center, who then alerted authorities.  They, in turn decided there was enough evidence to investigate further.

January 4, 2011, Joy White got the phone call she had been waiting 23 years for. Carlena, who had been raised under a different name called her biological mom.

DNA tests were taken and at last Carlena had found her way home.

"I never gave up hope," Carlina White's grandmother, Elizabeth, told WABC. "It is like she has been around us all her life. She wasn't a stranger. She fit right in."

With mother and daughter reunited, the attention now turns to who kidnapped baby Carlena. Police are currently searching for the woman that raised her.