NY Daily News

Twenty-three years after being snatched as an infant, the victim of a hospital kidnapping cracked the cold case herself when doubts about her bogus "mom" led her home.

Carlina White - just 19 days old when her late-night abduction by a phony nurse stunned the city - was reunited last weekend with her overjoyed biological mother, father and other relatives.

"I'm overwhelmed. I'm just happy. It's like a movie; it's all brand new to me," White told the Daily News Wednesday night as she arrived at LaGuardia Airport for the second reunion with her birth mom.

"Is it really happening?" her incredulous mom, Joy White, wondered after decades of prayers were answered. "I always dreamed this.

It was a stunning and unexpected resolution to one of the NYPD's most frustrating cases: a kidnapper casually carrying an infant out of Harlem Hospital and into the wind.

The last time Joy White and her father, Carl Tyson laid eyes on their chubby-cheeked child, Carlina was just 21 inches long, weighed 8 pounds and had a fever of 104. It was Aug. 4, 1987 - and it wasn't until Jan. 4, 2011, that their now 23-year-old baby girl was able to let them know she was safe.

"I feel like I don't know who I am!" she told staffers at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in a heartbreaking call around Christmas.

Center officials, long familiar with the White case, launched an investigation that confirmed Carlina's suspicions.

"This young woman gets all the credit," said center President Ernie Allen. "She felt it. Now she could have been just wrong - but in this case, we were able to help her get to the truth."

While Carlina and her once-distraught family were elated by their reunion, there was also anger at the woman who snatched the baby.

"I want her to suffer," Joy White said of the kidnapper. "I want her to do some time, like I suffered for 23 years."

Childhood filled with lies

Carlina was raised in Bridgeport, Conn., under an alias, Nejdra Nance. She told White that the woman she believed was her mother used phony IDs and Social Security numbers.

Joy White said Carlina told her the woman was a drug user who abused her - once hitting her in the face with a shoe - and often left her alone to baby-sit her younger "brother."

A Bridgeport woman named Mary Pettway confirmed that her daughter, Cassandra, had raised Carlina. She refused to discuss the relationship further.

Cassandra Pettway lives in Georgia, and Mary Pettway said she and Carlina were with her at Christmas.