This was an interesting case. An American professor teaching English in China met Chen Wen Yi and married her. Upon bringing her to the states, and subsequently returning to China for a teaching post, his wife mysteriously disappeared. Many months and dollars later, I and the good professor's paths crossed in a Chinese restaurant, and I offered to look into the case.

Subsequently it was discovered that the Professor's step sister (with whom his wife was parked), had abused her psychologically, taken the professor's money (left for his wife),hurled racial insults and eventually tossed her out of her home and onto the streets of America. Chen Wen Yi was truly a stranger in a strange land.

As time passed, she would write to her husband in China, never revealing what had actually happened to her, and never leaving a return address on her letters except for a postmark footprint in Southern California. During this time, she was writing to her mother in China as well, and upon a visit to the mother's home, the professor managed to acquire a physical address for his wife, which I then checked out. It turned out to be a mail drop, so I set a plan in action, a little "ruse" which I hoped would work. It did.

The plan was simple. I set up a 800 "trap number" which cannot be blocked by caller ID blocking and hoped that she would not use a pay phone to make her call. The mother wrote to her daughter and passed the number along, telling her it was urgent she call this number right away. Three weeks later, I received a call from his wife who talked in broken English for 5 minutes and hung up. Five minutes was just so long and long enough.

I had gotten the number she was calling from,and subsequently the address. During the summer of 1997 the professor and his wife were happily reunited. Currently, the professor is seeking legal action action against his step sister, which reminds me of old Chinese proverb: The nail that sticks up, gets hit.