Melissa Highsmith, who went missing from her home in Fort Worth, Texas, as a toddler in 1971, has been reunited with her family more than 50 years later following a DNA test.
The real Melissa Highsmith beside a colorized photo illustration of what she was believed to look like now from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The case made news headlines in September when an anonymous tipster reported a potential Charleston, South Carolina, sighting of Melissa. While Melissa Highsmith was not in Charleston at the time of the sighting, it brought national attention to the case and motivation to Highsmith's siblings to find their long-lost sister.
The family of Melissa Highsmith provided this photo of her as a baby. Highsmith disappeared from Fort Worth, Texas, Aug. 23, 1971, when she was just 21 months old. Jeff and Melissa's mother, Alta, who was recently separated when she moved to Fort Worth and worked as a waitress in the 1970s, had placed an advertisement in the local newspaper for a babysitter to watch over Melissa — her firstborn — at the time. A woman responded to the ad and agreed to meet Alta at the restaurant where the young mother worked but never showed up.
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