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Parents Meet Man They Say Is Son Who Was Kidnaped in 1976 : Reunion: They point out strong resemblance to boy abducted at age 4. ‘I can feel it,’ he affirms. Police, seeking proof, want to question Riverside County woman in the case.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

A mother and father said the 22-year-old man they rushed to the airport to meet Tuesday night is definitely the son who was kidnaped from a park near their Inglewood home 17 years ago.

“He and my other son have hazel eyes,” said the mother, Willie Mae Ruffin of Hawthorne. “He has his father’s lips and my nose.”

The father, Kenneth Portis of Lompoc, said, “He has a lot of our fathers’ features.”

Inglewood police said they were attempting to question a woman in the Riverside County town of Perris in the abduction of 4-year-old Kevin D. Portis in May, 1976.

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K.K., as the boy was known to his family, was taken from Inglewood’s Centinela Park by a woman who police believe lured him into her car with a promise of ice cream.

The man, who believes he is Kevin--although he says he was given the name Henry Miller by his alleged kidnaper--arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where a crowd of Portis relatives o met him.

The quiet young man seemed somewhat overwhelmed by the dozens of well-wishers who crowded into Ruffin’s apartment after his arrival from his Oakland home. Although authorities have yet to establish full proof that Miller is the long-lost boy, the man himself had no doubt. “I can feel it,” he said firmly.

According to Inglewood Police Capt. John Frazier and family members, the young man said that he always knew that his name was Kevin and that relatives of the woman, who raised him as her own, were suspicious about how he came into their family.

The man told family members that a relative of the woman helped him find his true identity by contacting a missing-children’s organization in Sacramento, Frazier said. When the organization came up with information on the Portis kidnaping, the relative contacted Inglewood police Dec. 21.

The young man’s helper, an 18-year-old woman who asked not to be identified, was at the Ruffin home on Tuesday night. Although she was reluctant to discuss many details, she was firm in her belief that she had reunited him with his rightful parents.

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“All you have to do is look at him,” said the woman, an Oakland resident, referring the family resemblance.

The suspected kidnaper, who was not identified, is the young woman’s grandmother.

The parents of the kidnaped child first learned he may have been found when an Inglewood police detective rang Ruffin’s doorbell on Monday. That event touched off a whirlwind of phone calls and memories, especially for Ruffin and the elder Portis, who are divorced.

“He remembered being in the park,” Kenneth Portis said Tuesday, after talking with the man by phone for three hours. “But he didn’t remember much after that. His whole world disappeared around him.”

“I never gave up hope,” Ruffin said, explaining that she always believed her son was alive somewhere. ‘

Inglewood police were reluctant to declare that the man is Kevin Portis.

“We don’t have any fingerprints,” said Frazier, commander of the office of criminal investigations. “We have a picture of a 4-year-old. We don’t have any dental records because he just had baby teeth at the time. So we’ll eventually probably have to go to DNA on this but that will take a lot of time.”

DNA testing can help determine a person’s genetic origin.

Gayron Jackson, the kidnaped boy’s older half brother, said he also talked to the young man by phone Monday.

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Jackson said he can recall searching the park for days after Kevin disappeared. The house the family lived in at the time was across the street from the park.

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Kevin had been playing in the park with a 3-year-old cousin at the time of the abduction, and the boy was too young to provide many details about the kidnaper, police said.

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