FBI agent reunited with abducted baby — now a Marine — he helped rescue decades ago


After spending decades wondering about the baby he rescued 22 years ago, retiring FBI agent Troy Sowers was finally able to give Stewart Rembert — now a corporal in the Marine Corps — a hug.
In 1997, a woman pretending to be a nurse abducted a newborn Rembert from the hospital. Sowers had only been with the FBI for a few months when he was tasked with finding Rembert, and after tracking down the woman, Sowers and other law enforcement officials were able to get her to reveal that she had left Rembert in a box behind a restaurant in Tacoma, Washington. "It's crazy to think that without his efforts, I wouldn't even be here today," Rembert told NBC News. "I wouldn't be a Marine. My family wouldn't be the same."
Sowers is now based in Knoxville, Tennessee, and wanting to give him a special send-off, his colleagues found Rembert and invited him to Sowers' retirement celebration on Friday. Rembert said he was "honored" to meet Sowers, and Sowers called this "probably one of the best surprises I've ever had." They shook hands and shared a hug, with Sowers remembering that after Rembert was found, a senior agent told him, "You'll never do anything better than that." Catherine Garcia
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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