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Elite Filipino marines rescued Carol Schilling’s son from rebels Thursday. 

“I’m deliriously happy,” she said, in a phone interview from her Oakland home Thursday afternoon. “Friends and family and strangers have been praying for me.” 

Jeffrey Schilling, 25, had been held captive by a rebel group for more than seven months.  

Schilling got the good news in a 3:30 a.m. phone call from the U.S. Embassy. As of a 4:30 p.m. press conference in front of her Oakland home, Schilling was still waiting to hear directly from her son. She’s not heard his voice since a mid-September call. 

A Muslim convert, Schilling was taken hostage by Muslim rebels after visiting their camp in Jolo on Aug. 31. He was accompanied by his wife, Ivy Osani, the cousin of a rebel leader. Osani was freed after the rebels seized Schilling. 

The circumstances of his kidnapping led some Filipino military officials to speculate that Schilling might have been cooperating with the rebels. The rebels accused him of being a CIA agent. 

How has Carol Schilling managed to get through the long ordeal that included the threat to behead her son? 

“It’s not in Dr. Spock,” she said, or in any other parenting manual. “It’s uncharted territory.” 

Schilling, who works as controller at the downtown Berkeley YMCA, said one of the best therapies for her has been playing with Roger, her friend’s toddler. Friends brought her food and took her for long walks. Co-workers were supportive, and her supervisor at the “Y” allowed her a flexible work schedule. Above all, she credits her faith in God. 

Schilling had held off going to the Philippines herself, until she was told of the rebels’ threat to behead her son on the birthday of the president last week. She flew to the Philippines and made an appeal via radio to the rebels to spare his life.  

While she was there, Schilling said she met with the Filipino Secretary of Defense. “He felt very empathetic,” she said. 

The embassy told Schilling that before her son comes home, he would be checked out by doctors, debriefed and would meet with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She said she believed Jeffrey would be back in Oakland this weekend. 

“I’m going to tell him I love him and I’m going to give him a great big hug and then I’m going to revoke his passport,” she said with a smile at the late afternoon press conference. 

A U.S. Embassy statement expressed “its deep appreciation” to the Arroyo and the military “for their efforts over the past 7 1/2 months to free Mr. Schilling.” 

And Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, issued a statement saying: “I am relieved that Jeffrey was released and is in good health. We all look forward to his return home." 

The Abu Sayyaf, the group that held Schilling, is the smallest of the three major insurgency groups in the Philippines. It shot to international notoriety last year after seizing dozens of hostages. It released all but two – Schilling and Roland Ulla, a Filipino worker at a scuba diving resort – for reported multimilllion-dollar ransoms. 

The group claims it is fighting for a separate Islamic state in the southern Philippines, but the government regards it as a bandit gang. 

Arroyo said her government will not hold peace talks with the group as it plans to do separately with the Muslim secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the communist National Democratic Front. 

Schilling’s only message to the rebels Thursday was a plea to free their remaining hostage, Filipino resort worker Ulla. 

“There’s no point in me being angry,” she said. “Hate the evil doing, not the evil doer.” 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.