Abducted: The Carlina White Story Page #10

---

And tears started fallin'

outta her eyes,

and I was like,

"What are you sorry about?"

And she was like,

"I'm just... I'm sorry.

"Um, I wish I coulda

told you," you know.

She was just like,

"Your mom just left you there.

She just left you there

and she never came back. "

I'm like, "What?"

She just basically told me

that she wasn't my mom...

that someone left me

and she took me in

and basically took care of me.

The news that Nejdra

was not Ann's child

surprised the whole family,

but the close-knit Pettway

clan closed ranks.

No one cared about it,

truthfully.

To me, she-she-she was

always my family,

and she will always be

my family.

Meanwhile,

the Connecticut Department

of Child and Families,

or D.C.F., opened a file

on Nejdra's case,

But there wasn't a lot

of information to go on,

and Ann wasn't much help.

It's like, she don't

remember anything.

She don't talk about it.

I asked her several times.

Ann claimed Nejdra had

been born in New Haven,

but there was

no record of the birth.

D.C.F. Took DNA samples

and confirmed that

Ann wasn't the mother,

but they said they couldn't

help Nejdra find out who was.

I was like, "Can you

take my blood at least

to match it up

with someone that's out there?"

They was like,

"That's TV stuff. "

D.C.F. Found out...

they didn't do nothin'.

What would you do if they say

that's not your mother

but they not finding

your mother?

It was like I'm startin'

from scratch.

I don't know anything... I don't...

I don't have any names,

no area where they from,

no background, no nothin'.

Nejdra, who had always

kept to herself

writing poems rather

than sharing her feelings...

kept this news

to herself as well.

She dealt with it

on her own, basically.

You would've never known

that there was speculation

that she was her mother,

that she wasn't her mother...

you never would've

known any of that.

I'm still healthy,

I'm still alive,

and I just gotta move forward,

And that's how I looked at it.

Besides, she had her own

baby to look after now.

On May 6, 2005, Nejdra

gave birth to a daughter.

She named her Samani.

That was the best thing

that happened to her.

She loves her.

To have a daughter

that's just like you

is the one thing she could've

ever asked for.

And eventually

that daughter

and the revelations

around her birth

would lead Nejdra to uncover

the secrets of her own birth.

I thank God that

she had a daughter

so that she could find me.

In 2005,

the girl called Nejdra

was 17 years old,

living in Bridgeport,

Connecticut,

with her new daughter, Samani.

She'd found out

that the woman she had always

called Mom, Ann Pettway,

in fact was not her mother.

Still, as she graduated

from high school

and moved out on her own,

she kept up a relationship

with Ann

and with the entire

Pettway family.

In 2009, she moved

near Atlanta,

where more members

of the Pettway family lived.

I just wanted a new atmosphere

for me and my daughter.

Nejdra found a job as an

assistant in a hair salon,

and she worked to build a life

for herself and her daughter.

She's a very down-to-earth...

strict mom.

P- e-n-r... So...

- P-e...

- Yeah.

It's cut off

so I read the rest.

She makes sure Samani

does her homework.

She makes sure she's on point

with everything she needs to do.

She's actually

a great mother.

But being a mother

made Nejdra wonder

about her own mother.

Wait, don't tell me... um...

Some days I wake up

and look at my daughter

and wonder,

"Who do I look like?"

Every so often,

she would trawl the Internet

looking for clues.

Mainly around July,

the summertime,

when my birthday come around...

'cause I already knew

that my birthday

wasn't the date

that I was born on.

Still intensely private,

she told no one

what she was doing.

That's something

I guess that she harbored,

which I know ate her up inside.

That was a journey that Nejdra

had to search and endure

on her own.

But in the fall of 2010,

Nejdra asked her aunt

Cassandra for help.

She was like,

"You know,

"I still want to find my mom

"and see who my family is. "

And I said, "If you want me

to help you, I'll help you. "

I think that was a chapter

in her life

that she needed to complete

in order to move forward

with her life.

Neither of them

thought about

what finding out the truth

would mean for Ann Pettway...

...the woman who

raised Nejdra.

The week before Christmas,

they began to search

for answers.

Nejdra had always looked

for stories

of missing children

from Connecticut,

since Ann had told her

she was born in New Haven.

This time, she decided

to cast a wider net.

I was just reading

through articles

about African-Americans,

Hispanics...

anything that was missing

around the New England area,

and I came across

that baby picture.

I thought it looked like

it could be me.

And just how the dates

were adding up...

it was a little

close to my birthday,

so I got kinda stuck

on the whole concept of it...

everything about the whole

article and the picture.

The picture she found

was of Carlina White,

stolen as a baby

from Harlem Hospital

in August 1987.

And I'm like,

"Auntie,

Don't you think

this look like me?"

It look like her,

but the only thing that was

in question for me was the hair.

It seemed like too much hair.

The picture was on

the web site

of the National Center for

Missing and Exploited children,

which had followed

Carlina's case for years.

Nejdra called

the center's hotline

and spoke to Jordan Wood.

She had strong suspicions.

I'm explaining to her

my whole story.

There were problems

with her birth certificate

and her other documents,

so that was her main concern

and her main reason for feeling

that she was possibly abducted

as an infant.

She just said,

"I feel that my parents

"are still out there

looking for me,

"not knowing that I'm going

by another name

and another social

security number. "

Nejdra did not tell Jordan

that she had seen the picture

of Carlina White.

I don't know exactly if that

was me in that picture.

I just called to see

if someone could match it up

and just let me know.

I could definitely hear

a lot of frustration

in her voice.

She had gone to other agencies

before she came to us,

and she hadn't gotten anywhere,

um, so, you know,

out of frustration,

she said, "I... I don't know

who I am. "

Jordan took Nejdra's information

and a complete physical

description

and passed it to the

center's analysts.

We knew, based upon

Netty's age,

that we could rule out

cases prior to 1987.

But then we began to look

at a wide range of cases

subsequent to 1987.

The child could've been taken

when she was

and not have any memory of her...

of her birth parents.

Finally, the analysts came up

with what they believed

was the best match...

Carlina White.

On January 4, 2011,

a caseworker called Joy White,

Carlina's mother.

I was at work

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes