Never give up hoping, for you do not know what the future will bring.
Original post from IJReview
When an 18-year-old teenager from Cape Town was told by friends that a new, younger student looked strikingly similar to her, she befriended the younger girl.
They had an immediate connection and bonded instantly. Like sisters.
According to the Cape Argus, when the younger girl told her parents about her new friend, they invited her to get coffee with the family.
As soon as the family met their daughter’s new friend everything made sense. The two bore a resemblance to each other and bonded like sisters because they were, in fact, sisters.
The older girl had once belonged to the parents of the younger girl, but she had been kidnapped shortly after she was born.
It was 1997, and Celeste Nurse had just given birth to a baby girl at a Cape Town hospital. She encountered a woman dressed as a hospital nurse sitting by her bed.
via Twitter/@JwanButimar
She drifted back to sleep but when she awoke again, her newborn was gone. In a previous interview she explained to Cape Times:
“When I woke up there was a nurse saying my child is gone. You can’t imagine the feeling,”
As it turns out, the baby had been kidnapped by the woman posing as a nurse.
And when Celeste and her husband Morne saw their daughter’s new friend, they immediately knew she was their long lost daughter. The girl’s aunt told Cape Talk:
“When she saw (her) yesterday, she knew, ‘This is my child.’ She said DNA wasn’t necessary, she just knew.”
DNA tests were given and what Celeste and Morne knew in their hearts to be true was indeed just that. It was their long lost daughter.
Photo cred: AFP/STRINGER
The woman who posed as a nurse is now facing kidnapping charges, along with fraud and pretending to be the girl’s biological mother.
via Twitter/@eNCAnews
Although the couple went on to have three more children after the kidnapping incident, they never lost hope that their daughter was out there somewhere. In fact, they threw her a birthday party on the date of her birth every year.
“I’ll never, ever give up hope. I can feel it in my gut — my daughter is out there and she is going to come home,” Morne proclaimed in an interview five years ago.
And five years later, she came home.
Finally reunited with their biological daughter, the Nurse’s birthday celebration will be a little different this year. Because this year, their daughter will be there to blow out the candles on her birthday cake.
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