Crystal Leann Anzaldi was just learning to walk when she was kidnapped from her home in California. Puerto Rican authorities discovered her seven years later through two key clues: a tiny birthmark and a distinctive smile.
"It was a really striking thing," said Anibal Torres, director of special investigations for the Puerto Rican Justice Department. "This baby's smile was so similar to this 8-year-old child. But it was the birthmark that really clinched it."Crystal had been missing since she was kidnapped from her bed on Dec. 8, 1990, at her family's home near Coronado Naval Base at San Diego. Authorities announced Monday that she turned up more than 3,000 miles away in Puerto Rico, after the woman who claimed to be her mother was arrested.
The child's parents, now divorced, were speechless when they learned their child had been found.
"It just put me into tears. I was so happy I couldn't talk. It was all I could do to sit in the chair," the girl's father, Jeff Anzaldi of Banks, Ore., told the Portland station KPDX-TV on Monday night.
The child's mother, Dorothy, 37, of Corning, Calif., was quoted by The San Diego Union-Tribune as saying, "It was just a solid sheet of tears down my face. My eyes were blurry. My heart went straight up in my throat."
The truth began to emerge about the child's past when Nilza Gierbolini Guzman, 35, who claimed to be the mother of the girl she called Sonja, was investigated for allegedly abusing her.
Though details of that probe weren't released, police became suspicious when the child's birth certificate turned out to be fake, Torres said. They began a search for her true identity.
Puerto Rican and federal investigators compared a recent picture of Crystal with more than 500 photos on the Internet site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, before they turned up a match. The posting referred to a tiny birthmark just to the left of her nose.
A genetic test showed that Gierbolini was not Crystal's mother, Torres said. More tests confirmed on Friday that Crystal was the missing daughter of the Anzaldis.
When confronted with the evidence, Gierbolini admitted the child was not hers, Torres said. She was charged in October with falsifying documents and could still face kidnapping charges, he said.
Gierbolini, a Puerto Rican native, lived in San Diego at the time of the kidnapping and was married to a Navy officer, who probably worked at the Coronado base as did Jeff Anzaldi, a former officer. She has no children of her own.
Crystal's ordeal still is not over. She is being cared for by Puerto Rican authorities while they determine with which parent she will live.