Reunion Ends the Wait of a Lifetime for Mom : Laguna Hills’ mother and her son, separated for 15 years when the boy’s father stole him, are focusing on making their own history instead of rewriting the past.

On Dec. 3, 1976, Deborah Runner said goodby to her 19-month-old son, Brian, for what she thought would be the weekend. As her ex-husband took their little boy’s hand and led him out of the house, Runner smiled at the kisses the toddler blew her way.

“Bye, Mama,” called Brian.

“Bye, Pumpkin, see you Sunday.”

Little did Runner know that she wouldn’t be seeing her son for 15 years. This December, after 1 1/2 decades of agonizing over her son’s whereabouts, Runner was reunited with him.

The toddler is now a teen-ager.

Today 17-year-old Brian lives in Laguna Hills with Runner, his stepfather, Tim Runner, and two half-sisters, Kimberly, 11, and Amanda, 9--a family he didn’t know existed until a week before their reunion.

For 15 years, Brian was called a different name and lived in another state with his father, who told Brain his mother was dead. Meanwhile, his mother did all she could to find him, including hiring a number of private detectives, investing in computer photo enhancements, seeking the assistance of psychic Peter Hurkos and appearing on the “Missing/Reward” television show.

“When (Brian’s father) didn’t return Brian, I took a week off work to find out as much as I could,” she says. “I soon discovered that he had taken a one-week leave of absence from his teaching job, and I thought, ‘Oh, good, he’s just on vacation with Brian. He’ll bring him back.’ ”

But when the week passed and Runner’s ex-husband didn’t return with Brian, Runner realized that her baby wasn’t coming home.

“It was a strange, horrible feeling,” says Runner. “As a mother you always have your baby to tuck in at night, but my baby wasn’t there.”

Runner called the police, but there was confusion over which department would have jurisdiction over the crime since Deborah lived in Huntington Beach at the time and her ex-husband lived in Riverside. There also wasn’t a lot the police could do except talk to his employers and neighbors, which didn’t lead to any clues.

Runner hired the first of many private detectives. The investigator discovered that her ex-husband had moved out of his home, sold his car and plane, cleaned out his bank accounts and resigned from his teaching position.

While detectives were searching for Brian, Runner did all she could to find her son and to help other parents of missing children. The Department of Justice estimates that 350,000 children are victims of family abduction each year.

She testified in a U.S. Senate hearing to help pass legislation against child stealing as well as other sessions on missing children; encouraged friends to write Congress in support of anti-child stealing legislation and spoke at many support groups.

In 1977, a federal law made child stealing a felony. Runner and the district attorney went to court and got a felony warrant issued for her ex-husband’s arrest, but the months had erased any trace of him.

“The trail had grown cold and it was thought that he had left the state,” says Runner. “Every now and then the police would dust off my file and do a little detective work. They’d call his mother, who always said she’d never heard from him, but there wasn’t much else they could do.”

Runner says she spent tens of thousands of dollars on private detectives. When she married Tim Runner a year after Brian’s abduction, the couple used her wages to pay for detectives and lived on his earnings.

“Some of the detectives were good; they’d find potential leads, but they were all dead ends, and they never discovered the most important thing--the location of my son,” says Runner.

Other detectives weren’t so good. “One detective called me and said, ‘Are you sitting down? I think I’ve found your son.’ I was so excited I couldn’t stop jumping up and down. When I asked him where Brian was, he told me my then 4-year-old son was off the coast of Italy in Sicily. Later we met and the detective showed us a picture of a boy with blond hair. It was taken from far away and was really distorted from being enlarged. He also said (the ex-husband) and Brian were living with a Mafia family.”

The Runners then saw an article in a supermarket tabloid in which the detective said he’d rescued someone else’s child in Sicily by using helicopters and mercenaries. “Pieces of that story were similar to the one he’d fed us,” she says.

Tim Runner isn’t surprised that they fell for the hoax. “When your child is missing, you’re very vulnerable,” he says. “Unfortunately, there are some investigators who take advantage of that.”

Deborah Runner went to bed crying every Mother’s Day, April 11 (Brian’s birthday) and Dec. 3 for 15 years. “I thought about him daily, but those times were especially difficult,” she says.

James Hall is a psychiatrist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in the Kaiser Anaheim office who has counseled Deborah Runner over the years. “Not knowing where your child is creates a psychic lesion that cannot heal,” he says. “Never a day or even an hour goes by without the parent wondering about the child. The situation creates a chronic, unresolved grief.”

Tim Runner completely supported Deborah’s search for Brian, but says that he never fully understood her pain until his oldest daughter from his first marriage died.

“When my daughter died, I felt this terrible emptiness in my chest. It wasn’t until then that I truly understood Deborah’s pain,” he says. “But I was able to say goodby to my daughter. With Deborah the tragedy went on year after year.”

Over the years Brian was missing, Deborah had contact with her ex-husband twice.

“When Brian was 3 years old, (my ex-husband) called,” she says. “He apologized, said Brian needed his mother, but he didn’t want to risk a jail sentence. I told him we could work things out, and he said he’d think about it. I also reminded him what a good mother I had been, and he agreed.”

Then, “on Dec. 13, 1991, at 6:30 in the morning I was in my bedroom getting ready for work when I got a call from him,” she says. “He asked if I wanted Brian before Christmas and I screamed ‘of course!’ into the phone. He said it would take at least five days to get Brian to us.”

Brian was dropped off at the Holiday Inn-Laguna Hills on Dec. 17, 1991.

Runner describes the reunion as a tearful one.

“To see a full-grown guy who resembled the little boy I last saw 15 years ago was an incredible sensation. It was a little bit like looking in a mirror, too, because there is a strong resemblance between us,” she says.

“Brian is everything you’d want in a son,” she says. “He’s easygoing, well-mannered, intelligent, has a great sense of humor and has really fit in well with the family.”

Brian has had to adjust to a new name (“I sometimes start to say my old name when people ask, although I like my new name better”) and an unfamiliar school. A junior at Laguna Hills High School, Brian was moved into honors English and history at the spring semester break.

And he’s had to adjust to a new family. “I was shocked and elated to find out that I had a mother and two sisters,” says Brian, “Growing up without a mother all of those years was pretty hard. Every Mother’s Day I would make a present and just give it to my dad. Whenever I did that he would always say, ‘Someday you’ll get to see your mom again.’ At the time I didn’t know he meant in this lifetime.

“It was really weird saying ‘Mom’ at first,” he says.

After Brian’s return, Deborah Runner took some time off work so that they could get to know one another again.

“We were virtually strangers,” she says. “It’s hard to make the connection from a baby to (someone who’s) 6-feet tall. One day in the supermarket I told him that the last time we went shopping together he was in the cart and I was buying him baby food.”

Despite their attempts at filling in the gaps, Deborah and Brian realize that the past can never be regained. “There is a big hole of time in my life and his when we didn’t know each other,” she says, “But the longer we have together, the more memories we build.”

It’s impossible to make up for lost time, agrees Hall. “History has been altered--but that doesn’t mean they can’t make their own history.”

Runner doesn’t know why her former husband returned their son to her, but she did have a chance to ask him why he abducted Brian.

“He told me that he was sorry for all those years, and if he had to do it all over again, he never would have done it. He said he took Brian because he was afraid his son would become estranged from him. Just seeing Brian every other weekend wasn’t enough. He was also upset about our divorce,” she says.

A felony warrant for her ex-husband’s arrest is still in effect and he was not willing to answer questions, and Brian did not want to reveal his former name or what city he grew up in.

“I’m not angry with my father,” says Brian. “He did what he felt he had to do. All that really matters is that I’m with my new family now.”

Deborah Runner says Brian’s years with his father were happy ones and he loves both parents. “He doesn’t want to choose one of us over the other and he shouldn’t have to. We aren’t trying to figure out who’s at fault,” she says. “All that really matters is that Brian is here and we’re happy to have him.”

Accepting the situation will ease the transition, according to Hall. “It is in the best interest of the child and the whole family that the parents don’t react with anger and retaliate, because that will just create more conflict,” he says. “Reacting calmly and trying to understand and accept is the best approach.”

The Runners’ message to others is one of hope. “When I needed inspiration, I would read this newspaper story I saved about a woman who was reunited with her 4-year-old son, and I would tell myself that one day I’d see my son again,” says Runner. “There is always hope--Brian is proof.”