Teen Stolen at Birth Has Kind Words for 'Mom,' Not for 'Dad'

'I was given the best life,' says Alexis Manigo
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 18, 2017 12:37 PM CST
Teen Stolen as Baby: 'From One Mistake I Was Given Best Life'
Kamiyah Mobley, aka Alexis Manigo, is shown with Gloria Williams in a screenshot from ABC News.   (ABC News via YouTube)

She was born Kamiyah Mobley and snatched from her then-16-year-old mother out of a Florida hospital room when she was just hours old—but for the next 18 years, she was raised as Alexis Manigo, and she loved that life. "From that one mistake I was given the best life," Manigo—which is how she identified herself—told Good Morning America on Wednesday. "I had love." She says that, though she understands what Gloria Williams allegedly did was wrong, she "will always be 'Mom'" and the two talk on the phone every day. Manigo does not have kind words, however, for Williams' ex-boyfriend, Charles Manigo, who recently called the teen "the love of my life" and said he still considered her his daughter. "You were nothing to me," Manigo wrote on Facebook in response to those headlines, according to First Coast News.

She said Charles Manigo wasn't there for her during important moments, but Williams was. (The pair split in 2003 but shared custody of the girl after that.) According to Arika Williams, who believed herself to be Alexis Manigo's half-sister, Manigo first discovered that wasn't her true identity two years ago when she applied for a job and needed her birth certificate and Social Security card. "Then Miss Gloria just broke down and told her ... I kidnapped you," Arika Williams tells People, adding that Manigo was "upset" at the revelation, but ultimately decided to "let it go." Arika Williams says Gloria Williams told Manigo that she was pregnant, and when she lost the baby, she "went and got Kamiyah." News4Jax reports that Gloria Williams' baby was stillborn at nine months' gestation, which is why her family didn't question the situation. (More kidnapping stories.)

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