Mother, son to be reunited after decade

When 3-year-old David Ohlson vanished on a November day in 1994, allegedly taken by his father after his parents divorced, the little boy's mother felt as if she were all alone.

''All I had was him," she related yesterday. ''When he disappeared, I felt like I didn't have anyone."

The young woman -- who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Elisa -- eventually remarried and had three other children. But she never stopped believing that she would see her oldest son again.

Finally last week, in a phone call that left her stunned, she learned that the boy had been found living with his father in Brazil.

Now 13, he is expected back in Massachusetts next week to meet the mother he barely remembers.

''It's amazing. It's overwhelming. I can't explain it," she said, surrounded by family at her home on the South Shore. ''I can't wait to meet him and see what he looks like, how he talks, what he's about. . . . I just want to give him a big hug."

Lynn police said yesterday that a tip from a local resident with ties to Brazil helped lead police in Rio de Janeiro to the home of 39-year-old David Gustav Ohlson, the boy's father, who has been featured on the Lynn Police Department's ''Most Wanted" list in connection with the 10-year-old case.

Ohlson is being held in a Brazilian prison, awaiting deportation to the United States, which could take as long as two months, to face kidnapping charges, police said.

His son is staying with an American family in Brazil and could return to this country as early as Wednesday, his mother said.

Police in Massachusetts continued to work the case throughout the decade the child was missing, Lynn Police Lieutenant Tom Reddy said, and had previously received tips that he might be in Brazil.

''It was a matter of locating exactly where he was and getting a great lucky break, to get a definite location on him," Reddy said. ''A lot of times, these things don't come to fruition. It's a satisfied feeling."

The long separation of mother and son began on Nov. 8, 1994, the last time Elisa saw her firstborn child. Living in a Lynn apartment with the rambunctious 3-year-old after the end of her four-year marriage to Ohlson, she received a phone call from her former husband, saying he would stop by to pick up the boy for a visit.

When he arrived, she recalled yesterday, she rode downstairs in the elevator with the toddler in her arms.

''As soon as the doors opened, he grabbed him from me," she said. ''I said, 'Let me kiss him goodbye.' [But] he was in a hurry."

In the weeks and months that followed, Elisa said, she was depressed, sometimes nearly suicidal, at the loss of her only child.

''It was always hard, not seeing him day to day, not knowing him," she said. ''But something in my heart always told me I'd see him again. . . . I thought he would come looking for me."

She worked closely on the case with the FBI for years, but after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she said, she assumed the agency would need to devote its resources to bigger concerns.

''You wouldn't think people would still be out there working on it, but they are," she said.

Now that her son is headed back to her, she said, she is both eager and anxious, ''afraid of rejection." She doesn't even know for sure if young David, who spoke English with her as a child, still considers it his native language.

For now, Elisa said she is doing what she can to prepare for their reunion, explaining to her three small children, ages 5, 2, and 1, that they're going to meet their long-lost older brother and making room for the 13-year-old who will soon join the family.

She knows he'll need a warm winter coat, and she hopes to bring one when she goes to meet him.

But even that simple wish is complicated by his long absence.

''I don't know if he's short or tall," she said.