Abducted Girl Reunited With Mother : Families: Nancy Romo, 5, was taken a year ago by her father. With the help of a TV program, the Newhall child is located in Mexico.

Sara Romo can sleep well again.

Nearly a year after her daughter, Nancy, was abducted by her estranged husband, Romo was again cuddling her daughter in her arms after a stroke of luck, a television show and a hand grenade brought the pair together again.

“I’m very happy,” Romo of Newhall said Friday, a day after picking up her 5-year-old daughter from social workers in Ensenada, Mexico. “I’ve gotten a lot of help from people I didn’t expect.”

Nancy was abducted April 4, 1992, by Julio Alberto Perez Romo, 40, a Mexican citizen who was separated from his wife at the time and had visitation rights. Authorities said the father disappeared and spent the next several months in and out of Mexico with the girl.

On March 22, a Mexican television channel broadcast a show about abducted children that featured Nancy. Three days later, Federal Highway Patrol officers in Ensenada arrested the father after a routine security check of his bus showed him to be carrying a hand grenade, bullets and a ski mask, Lt. Salvador Castillo Aleman said.

Nancy, who was on the bus with her father, was turned over to Mexican child welfare authorities. A social worker who recognized Nancy from the March 22 broadcast contacted Sara Romo’s family in central Mexico. The family then notified Sara Romo and picked up the girl Thursday.

Now the pair are getting to know each other again. On Friday, they went shopping for shoes for Nancy. The child’s brother, 17-year-old Moses Romo, said the reunion has changed the entire atmosphere in the home.

“It was like a blanket on the house. It was like darkness. You don’t feel the same,” Moses said.

Authorities were relieved as well.

“Listen, I’ve worried about this for a long time. This is the only case that has actually sat on my desk for an entire year,” said Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Sgt. Dick Young, who filed a warrant for the father’s arrest and helped Sara Romo get in touch with authorities in Ensenada.

Officials at the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana said any charges for parental abduction filed by U.S. officials against the father would have to be tried in Mexico, since he is a Mexican citizen.

For her part, Nancy does not seem to be concerned with such matters.

Asked what she missed most about her home, she simply ran to her mother and squeezed her hand.