Lifetime Movie: "Little Girl Lost: the Delimar Vera Story"

I was writing out bills when the commercial caught my ear. A TV movie on Lifetime about a mother finding her daughter, six years after the child had been declared dead in a house fire as an infant? Didn't that happen in Philadelphia? I put down my pen, and it all came back to me.

For years, relatives suspected the little girl named Aliyah being raised by Carolyn Correa of the Philadelphia suburb of Willingboro, New Jersey, was not her own. What's more, they also suspected who the real parents were - Correa's cousin, Pedro Vera, and his ex-wife Luzaida "Luz" Cuevas of Philadelphia -- whose ten-day old daughter Delimar had been declared dead in 1997 when authorities concluded that she had been consumed in a house fire in Philadelphia's Feltonville neighborhood.

Luzaida Cuevas, the mother, told firefighters on the night of the fire that she had tried to save her baby, but when she went into the bedroom, found the crib empty. A language problem and Cuevas' agitated state at the time, could have caused the confusion that led firefighters to think she was upset because she couldn't save her baby.

Pedro Vera, the father, had more occasion over the years to see Aliyah/Delimar than did Cuevas, who, since the couple had separated after the baby's assumed death, had only seen pictures Aliyah/Delimar shown to her by Vera's relatives. Cuevas always had a feeling that the little girl was still alive somewhere. In January of 2004, Pedro Vera's sister invited Luz Cuevas to the same birthday party as Correa and the then six-year-old little girl. When Cuevas saw her, she said she was positive it was her daughter. Pretending to help the girl get gum out of her hair, Cuevas secured strands of the girl's hair and took them to authorities. DNA tests proved that Cuevas and Vera were the girl's biological parents.

Jose Vera says for years, relatives suspected the girl Correa called her daughter was not her own, but felt caught in the middle because of the family relationship, being cousins to both families. "We told them many times over the years that Aliyah looked like their child and they should do something," Jose Vera told the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill. But, nothing was ever done.

Carolyn Correa Willingboro, N.J., was charged with kidnapping the 10-day-old girl from her crib in December,1997, setting fire to the house to cover her crime and raising the infant as her own. She was eventually sentenced to 14 years. Delimar/Aliyah was returned to her parents, who share custody. In the beginning, Delimar, who continued to use the name Aliyah to make the transition easier, had to adjust to being removed from the only mother she every known and being moved into a Philadelphia rowhouse, which was a far cry from the suburban New Jersey home she had lived in with Correa.

I haven't heard much about this little girl in the ensuing years, who lives about ten minutes from me, which is probably a good thing. Now ten years old, hopefully she has been able to adjust to the bizarre circumstances of her life.

The movie "Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story," first aired on August 17, 2008, on Lifetime. It is frequently rerun. Watch your local listings.

Sources:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/09/national/main604814.shtml
http://www.nbc10.com/news/5013076/detail.html
http://www.nbc10.com/news/2904796/detail.html