Tiffany Rubin had all but given up hope of ever seeing her abducted son again when she received a tip through her MySpace page. Someone had spotted her seven-year-old son and ex-boyfriend in South Korea.
On Easter Sunday, the Queens special education teacher caught a 15-hour flight. She sneaked into her son's school, found Kobe Lee in a classroom, disguised him with a wig and sought refuge in the US embassy before bringing him home to Queens on Wednesday.
Her nightmare began on Aug. 21, after her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Salko disappeared with their child after a visit.
PHOTO: AP
At the time, he had joint custody of his son, but was facing up to six months in jail for not paying child support. The boy lived with his mother and saw his father on alternate weekends.
Kobe's court-appointed law guardian, Joseph Fredericks, had recommended Rubin receive sole custody of the boy.
"They were constantly at war over this child," Fredericks said of the parents, who had separated when Kobe was four months old.
After Salko disappeared with her child, Rubin was afraid her ex, born in South Korea, had taken the boy abroad.
"I was just basically panicking," Rubin said. "I was hoping they were still in the United States."
Her fears were realized when she hacked into Salko's e-mail account, she said. She discovered an e-mail he had sent to a friend saying he was flying to South Korea -- and wasn't coming back.
Rubin, 30, wanted to hire a private organization that specialized in recovering lost children, but couldn't afford the steep fees.
Mark Miller, founder of the American Association for Lost Children Inc, a Christian charity that recovers missing children, convinced her to put him on the case -- free of charge.
The FBI issued a warrant for Salko's arrest, but Rubin didn't get her big break until January.
She received a message on her MySpace page from someone who had seen her son and knew where he went to school.
Shortly after, she flew to South Korea with Miller and Bazzel Baz, chief executive officer of the Association for the Recovery of Children, to recover Kobe.
The men surveyed the school while Rubin waited in the hotel. Security seemed to be lax there, Rubin said, and the next day she went to her son's classroom and called his name.
"I was like, oh my God," Kobe said. "I can't believe she's here."
Rubin explained who she was to her son's teacher and said she needed a minute to speak with him. Then mother and son walked out of the building and hailed a cab to the US embassy.
As an added precaution, she made Kobe wear a wig, so anyone looking for them would think he was a girl.
On the following day, mother and son returned home.
"He's doing good, watching cartoons and wanting to play video games," Rubin said.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS