A couple in South Africa have found their daughter 17 years after she was stolen from her sleeping mother’s arms, thanks to an astonishing coincidence, police said on Friday.

Zephany Nurse was abducted from a hospital in Cape Town three days after her birth in April 1997. Her bereft parents, Morné and Celeste Nurse, never gave up hope of seeing their first-born again and celebrated her next 17 birthdays without her.



Celeste Nurse with baby Zephany before she was abducted in April 1997. Photograph: Europics

Zephany grew up just a couple of miles away with a different name and a different family, never suspecting she was not their real daughter. But last month her biological sister, Cassidy Nurse, began attending the same school, and soon fellow pupils noticed a startling resemblance between them.



Morné Nurse then saw Cassidy and Zephany eating burgers together in McDonald’s, and, struck by the physical similarities, contacted the police. DNA tests confirmed that she was the Nurses’ long-lost daughter. Zephany is now in the care of social services, while the woman who allegedly kidnapped and raised her has been arrested and charged.

As the Nurses came to terms with the extraordinary turn of events, Zephany’s aunt, Shantal Berry, said on Friday: “We feel very excited, happy. There is just a joy. It feels like we’re in a dream and we must still wake up. Can this really be happening?”

Recalling the moment that Zephany was kidnapped in 1997, she said: “Oh my God, it was like a funeral. Sad. We felt empty, lost. We felt why, why? The feeling now is very different from that time.



“Over the years there was negative talk from people outside about her being killed, but not in the family. We knew she was alive. We had birthday parties for her every year. She’s back now and we’re going to have a big party.”



Berry, a housekeeping supervisor at a hotel, described the moment when Zephany came face to face with her biological sister. “It was the first day of school and the other kids told Cassidy ‘there’s a girl who looks just like you’. When she saw Zephany she said ‘my God, she looks just like me’. Cassidy gave her a hug and it started from there. When Zephany’s brother saw her, he knew instantly.”



Berry’s brother, Morné Nurse, was subsequently reunited with his daughter at a McDonald’s branch. “Zephany and Cassidy were having burgers and her dad walked in. He was excited but he had to contain himself, to not say anything, and carry on investigating.”



Zephany met her mother for the first time in 17 years on Thursday, Berry added.

“She was very excited. She cried, she told me. She said she’s got a very pretty, very beautiful daughter.”



Berry, who has not met Zephany herself, said the teenager was currently in a “safe place” and would move in with her parents eventually, but they are not sure when.



She said of the woman who abducted the baby: “I don’t feel anything towards her. She stole our child, she stole 17 years, she stole everything from us.”

The woman accused of snatching Zephany is understood to be 50 years old with no other children. On Friday she appeared at the Cape Town magistrates court charged with kidnapping, fraud and contravening sections of the Children’s Act. A small figure in a striped top, she clutched her hands nervously in the dock, the Cape Argus newspaper reported. Her expression was passive as she heard she would spend the next week behind bars at Woodstock police station.



The paper said: “Her family were devastated. They wept outside the courtroom, the Nurse family barely glancing at them as they walked by in a tight huddle.”



The accused woman’s sister reportedly said of Zephany: “She has been part of our lives for ever. And now she’s just gone ... We have had no contact or anything. We have no idea where she is.”



Lieutenant colonel André Traut, a police spokesman, said: “The suspect is being charged with kidnapping, fraud and contravening sections of the Children’s Act, in that she fraudulently pretended that she was the biological mother of a child.



“The kidnapped girl has since been placed in the care of the department of social services of the Western Cape government.”



Zephany was snatched from the maternity ward at the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, best known as the site of the world’s first heart transplant operation in 1967.



Morné and Celeste went on to have three other children: Cassidy, Joshua and Micah. They continued to celebrate Zephany’s birthday each April, often with a giant cake sponsored by a local supermarket. In a 2010 interview with the Weekend Argus newspaper, Morné said: “I’ll never, ever give up hope. I can feel it in my gut – my daughter is out there and she is going to come home.”