N.Y. Mom Tracks, Retrieves Missing Son in South Korea

March 31, 2008 — -- One of the first things 7-year-old Kobe Lee did when he got home following his seven-month abduction in South Korea was play with his cat.

That mundane reaction was a relief to Kobe's mother, Tiffany Rubin, who had spent months trying to track down her son after he disappeared Aug. 21 following a visit with his father, Jeffrey Salko.

"I wasn't sure that I was going to see him again. I hoped I would. But part of me was just saying, 'You may never see him again,'" Rubin said. "I didn't get out of bed for a week. I was completely depressed. I lost like 20 pounds."

Rubin feared her ex-boyfriend, Salko, had taken Kobe his native South Korea. After she hacked into his email account, her fears were confirmed.

"It's like the worst feeling I could ever imagine a person feeling. It's like you're accepting a loss that a loved one has passed away, but they haven't died. They are just being kept from you, which is kind of harder," said Rubin, a special education teacher in the New York City borough of Queens.

Rubin, who is 30 and married, got new hope in January when she received an online anonymous tip on her Myspace page telling her where to find Kobe.

Rubin sought the aid of American Association for Lost Children founder Mark Miller, but she was so emotionally battered by her previous efforts to find Kobe, she nearly didn't accept his aid.

"I really felt hopeless for a long time almost to the point where I didn't accept Mark's help because I was afraid," Rubin said on "Good Morning America" today. "I had been so disappointed and then I guess God spoke to my heart and said, 'Let him help you.'"

Miller and Rubin concocted a plan, which took months, and decided to travel after an extended school break to ensure Kobe would be at school when they went to retrieve him.

When Rubin arrived in South Korea March 23 after a 15-hour flight, she met with the tipster, whose name she's declined to reveal. That person told her how she would be able to enter the school unnoticed. Miller and Rubin also watched the school to determine the extent of its security.