Anna Sims spent a year pleading with her husband and the authorities for the return of her son. On Wednesday, she took only one change of clothes and hurried to Costa Rica to reclaim the boy. Fayette A. Sims IV, nicknamed 'Mula,' was taken to Costa Rica by his father in April 2003.

Authorities say Sims took his son to Costa Rica 14 months ago and has kept him there despite the pleas of the boy's mother, Anna Sims, who lives in metro Atlanta. After learning of the arrest, she flew to Costa Rica on Wednesday, eager to be reunited with her son.

"I'm just going to hug him and kiss him all over," she said by cellphone from Central America. "I'm just so happy that I'm going to see my son."

Anna Sims, 29, met Fayette Sims III, 56, through an Internet service that matched women in her native Ukraine with men in the United States looking for a wife. She came to America in April 1998 and gave birth nine months later. She and her husband named the boy Fayette A. Sims IV, but nicknamed him "Mula."

Anna Sims said problems surfaced not long into the marriage. She said her husband frowned on her plans to learn English and told her she didn't need a Social Security card. She said she tried to keep the marriage together for her son's sake, but she filed for divorce after her husband sold a share of his family's business for $3 million and left for Costa Rica in April 2003.

He said it would be a brief vacation with their son.

In December, a federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted Sims for international parental kidnapping. Lazarus said authorities will seek to extradite Sims to face charges in Atlanta.

Mula was placed in the custody of child welfare officials in Costa Rica after his father's arrest and remained there Wednesday pending the outcome of a custody hearing, Lazarus said.

Anna Sims' lawyer, Bob Marshall, said authorities in Costa Rica told him that Sims spoke to arresting officers of having a briefcase containing $1 million in cash. Lazarus declined to comment on that detail.

Marshall also said that police told him Sims had been lending money and was "really well connected" to prominent people in the town where he lived with his son.

"It's obvious he intended to stay there permanently," Lazarus said.

The U.S. State Department says that at any given time, it tracks about 1,100 cases of international parental kidnapping in which one parent takes a child out of the United States without the other parent's permission. A 1993 law makes it a federal crime, but left-behind parents often face an uphill battle in securing a child's return because laws vary from country to country and because court orders from the United States are not automatically recognized abroad.

About 60 countries have signed a treaty governing the return of abducted children — Costa Rica has not — but authorities say compliance varies from country to country. State Department figures compiled last year showed Mexico with the most open abduction cases (154), followed by Germany, Jordan, Japan and Egypt, with from 33 to 41 each. The figures list 17 cases in Costa Rica.

Anna Sims said she planned to show a Costa Rican judge court papers establishing that a Gwinnett County judge awarded her temporary custody. She said she did not know when the judge would rule, but she said she hoped it would happen sooner rather than later — she took only one change of clothes on the trip.

"They said my son is really happy, and he wants to see me," Anna Sims said. "I love him so much."