"I didn't know if Andrew were dead or severely injured, hospitalized somewhere," Dr. Dennis Mosier said.
After 15 long months, last Thursday morning, Mosier got the news he had been waiting for.
"There were many times I feared I would not see Andrew again," he said.
The neurologist at Baylor College of Medicine was reunited with his son in Michigan.
"When I saw Andrew for the first time, I had to look up at him for the first time in 15 months; he's grown, he's now taller than I am," Mosier said.
The search for 14-year-old Andrew began just months after Mosier was awarded custody of his son. Andrew disappeared from the bedroom of his West University home in August 2010.
Last week he was found with his maternal uncle, 52-year-old Douglas John Lazell, in a Jackson, Michigan hotel room.
But this father says his son isn't talking much about the past year and it could take months or years for him to get back to the son he was before he lived on the road in isolation. Andrew already struggled with a minor learning disability.
"When you ask him something about emotions, opening up, what happened, he clams up. At this point we don't even know if he received any schooling," Mosier said.
Andrew is one of hundreds of thousands of children who have been abducted by family members. The majority of missing children cases involve family members over strangers.
"There's not the same sense of urgency when there's a child that's been abducted by a stranger. It's sometimes very hard, there are limited resources, and so it's very hard to get to the front of the line and make the case urgent," family law attorney Laura Dale said.
Mosier says he believes his story can raise awareness when it comes to family abductions and give other parents some hope.
"We need to deal with what happened to him and give him the best chance we can," he said.
Andrew will be receiving residential treatment at a special home.
As for Lazell, he's waiting extradition from Michigan to face charges of unlawful restraint of a child here in Harris County and more charges are expected.
