Byline: GORDY HOLT P-I reporter

Much of the worry has subsided. The children have been found. They are safe. They are beautiful.

"All we have to worry about now is their passports and getting them out," said their soon-to-be mother, Majken Ryherd.

The children, Bassie, a boy 31/2 years old, and Adama, a girl just 2, had become enmeshed in an adoption drama that played out late last month in far-off Sierra Leone, a place in West Africa where war has been a way of life.

"We are incredibly relieved and heartened to know that our children are safe - more so that they actually exist," said Ryherd, chief of staff for state House Speaker Frank Chopp.

"We've ...