The grandmother of a two-year-old boy in the middle of a custody battle that stretches from Oregon to Mexico was on her way to Portland Monday.

KGW has learned that Gabriel Allred's biological grandmother, Cecilia Martinez, was on a flight to PDX Monday morning, to fight the legal battle in person.

Meantime, the deadline for deciding whether to send Gabriel to Mexico to live with his grandmother or let him stay with the Oregon couple who wants to adopt him has passed quietly with a top state child welfare official still considering the boy's future.

"He's being circumspect," said Greg Parker, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Human Services, about Bryan Johnston, the interim assistant director for the agency's Children, Adults and Families Division.

Johnston, a former state lawmaker, law professor and judge, has a reputation as a mediator who can untangle the most twisted corporate or government knots.

Now Gov. Ted Kulongoski is counting on him to make a decision that might challenge King Solomon.

KGW photo

Gabriel Allred and foster dad Steve Brandt.

Steve and Angela Brandt are devoted to the little boy they have raised from infancy as foster parents. They have been in custody of the boy after his Mexican father, a convicted sex offender, and his American mother, convicted on methamphetamine charges, were stripped of their parental rights.

Background: State considering foster child adoption plan

The Brandts want to formally adopt Gabriel. But the state has twice recommended sending him to Mexico to live with his blood relatives -- his biological grandmother, Cecilia Martinez, and her extended family.

The Brandts have gone to court to ask a judge to give them permanent custody before the state takes him, and Johnston plans to mediate in private sessions to ease some of the pressure that has been building up.

At some point, the grandmother is supposed to visit the Brandts at their home in the coastal town of Toledo so they can get to know each other and try to iron out their differences. Possibly because of the potential for conflict, state officials aren't saying when exactly that visit will occur. Neither are the Brandts.

Questions abound, without any easy answers.

Conservative broadcasters and columnists have sided with the Brandts, including radio talk show host Lars Larson of KXL-AM in Portland and Lou Dobbs of CNN.

"You're championing a noble cause," Dobbs told the Brandts in an appearance on his show last month.

David Reinhard, a columnist with The Oregonian, has called on the state's political leaders "to reverse the bloodless

bureaucratic decision to send Gabriel to live with his grandmother in Mexico."

In a commentary that appeared on Sunday, Dec., 2, Reinhard noted his view was shared by Gabriel's foster care caseworker and the caseworker's supervisor, along with the boy's court-appointed special advocate.

Little has been heard from the boy's biological family, partly because rural Mexico is a long away from Oregon, and partly because the biological parents are both convicts.

But Martinez told one TV station in Portland that she was remodeling her house in San Jose Miahuatlan, outside Mexico City, to prepare it for Gabriel, whom she had not met. She told the station that Gabriel would have everything he needs in Mexico, and that his aunts and other relatives would help raise him and take care of him.

The woman who wants to adopt him, Angela Brandt, says Gabriel already has everything he needs in Oregon -- a rural home with pets and plenty of land for Gabriel to play with her four sons, a loving father who is a deputy sheriff, and most importantly, familiar faces who have been his family since he was four months old.

"This is not about who has the better home," she said. "It's about Gabriel's attachments. I truly believe if we moved to Mexico he'd do just fine. It's about living with strangers and his attachment to us."

Brandt, who has schooled herself in adoption procedure, apologizes when she chokes up in interviews, blaming the stress and the fear of losing the little boy she has come to call her own. She also worries about meeting Martinez, and how the two families will handle a relationship that has been forced upon them by circumstances.

She says the state has been able to observe her family through caseworkers, but she questions how closely they have observed the Martinez family in Mexico.

Parker, the Department of Human Services spokesman, says Johnston will take it all into account as he works to find a solution. The governor said before the Thanksgiving holiday that he had hoped for a resolution by Dec. 3.

"Our goal here is to have an outcome that everyone supports, and of course, at its core is in the best interests of Gabriel," Parker said. "But what we are looking for here is a family for a child, not a child for a family."

Angela Brandt, however, says the process has already taken too long.

"I'll be glad when it's over," she said. "And I pray it will have some impact on other children besides Gabriel in the long run."