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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS