A WOMAN WHOSE baby was snatched from a New York Hospital 23 years ago has finally been reunited with her daughter – after the young woman followed a hunch that she “did not belong”.

In 1987, Joy White took her 19-day-old baby Carlina to a Harlem hospital because the infant had been suffering from a high temperature. She left the hospital for two hours, and upon her return discovered that Carlina’s cot was empty.

In an emotional appeal to the media soon afterwards, Joy White said simply: “I hope she’s all right,” before breaking down in tears.

Raised under a different name after being stolen from hospital, Carlina White always suspected that “she did not belong to the family she was living with,” said Police spokesman Paul Browne the New York Times.

Carlina, raised as Nejdra Nance in nearby Connecticut, felt uneasy about the fact that she did not resemble any of her ‘family’ and began to dig into her past. She became more suspicious when the woman who raised her could not provide her birth certificate, and she contacted the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. She then found that photograph of a missing baby girl that she believed was her.

Ernie Allen, founding chairman and current president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, described his first contact with Carlina: “She basically said, ‘I don’t know who I am’”, he told the New York Daily News.

With the help of the centre, Carlina contacted Joy White – the woman she believed was her real mother. DNA testing confirmed her suspicions.

Carlina has since been reunited with her biological father and other members of her family: “I’m overwhelmed. I’m just happy,” she said “It’s like a movie; it’s all brand new to me”.