Kidnapped Boy and Mom reunite after 5 years ( San Diego)

 

                                                Julio Rocha

Keoni Rocha, 7, shares a laugh with his mother Leilani Masumoto on Thursday at their home in San Diego, California. The two were reunited after 5 years apart. Keoni was allegedly kidnapped by his father and taken to Mexico — Eduardo Contreras

                

SAN DIEGO — It had been five years since Leilani Masumoto had seen her son, who was just a toddler when authorities said his father kidnapped him from San Diego and whisked him to Mexico.

Now, the mother-son reunion that often haunted her dreams was about to come true.

As she waited for him at the Mexico City airport, she worried: “Will he even recognize me? Will I remember him?”

The 7-year-old boy she greeted was taller, but unmistakably her son.

“When I saw him I just broke down in tears,” she said Thursday.

The reunion last week was made possible with help from an enterprising young woman in Mexico and the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office Child Abduction Unit.

Keoni Rocha was abducted by his father, Julio Rocha, in 2007 after the boy’s mother requested full custody, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

The break in the case came recently when a student in Mexico was doing online research for a school project and came across a poster from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children with information about the boy and his father.

She recognized the boy as a neighbor who lived across the street, and she contacted authorities.