The grandmother of Haylee Donathan, the 4-year-old Ohio girl found this week at a Valley Center ranch with her mother and fugitive boyfriend, said Thursday she is still trying to make her way to California to reunite with the child.

"I just want to hold her and hug her and kiss her and let her know that 'Maw Ma' still loves her," Mary Watson said in an telephone interview from her Ohio home.

Watson said she has not been able to talk to Haylee, despite calls to the Polinsky Children's Center in San Diego, where Watson said Haylee was staying since she was found at Morning Star Ranch, a Christian commune farm on Keys Ranch Road.

The little girl was at the center of a monthlong nationwide search after she disappeared with her mother, Candace Watson, on May 28.

Authorities said Candace Watson helped boyfriend Robbi Potter, a convicted sex offender, flee an Ohio halfway house where he was staying while on probation six weeks after his release from federal prison.

Potter's conviction for sex offenses against two children under the age of 10 raised red flags about Haylee's safety.

But because Haylee was with her mother, who has legal custody, authorities could not issue an Amber Alert.

Last week, Haylee's grandmother won an emergency grant of custody of the missing child to see if an Amber Alert could be issued, but it was still not enough to jump the hurdles that must be cleared before such an alert can be issued.

Now, whether the emergency grant of custody is enough for Mary Watson to come to California and recover her granddaughter remains to be seen.

Watson said she wants to get to the West Coast as fast as possible but is in financial straits and has no money to do so. Nor does she have a place to stay.

"I'm just so stressed," said Mary Watson, who said she has been unemployed since last August. "I just can't handle any more today."

Watson said she was just released from the hospital -- which is where she was when she got the call that Haylee had been found safe.

"I just started screaming and crying," she said.

Peter Elliott, the U.S. Marshal in the Northern District of Ohio, said he believes the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will help Watson get a plane ticket to California.

Officials from the national center did not immediately return a phone call Thursday afternoon.

Mary Watson said no travel arrangements have been made, and she is still in limbo.

Watson said she has not spoken with her 24-year-old daughter since her capture Tuesday afternoon, after a tipster called the San Diego Sheriff's Department and reported that the missing and sought-after trio was at the Morning Star Ranch.

A ranch resident said the three had been staying there about a week before someone figured out who they were.

Candace Watson appeared in a San Diego courtroom Thursday morning to waive extradition charges and return to Ohio to face state charges of aiding and abetting Potter's escape. She was also charged Thursday in federal court in Ohio with harboring a federal fugitive.

Potter is due back in a San Diego federal courtroom on Monday for a detention hearing, and after that will probably be taken back to Ohio to face charges for fleeing, Elliott said.

VALLEY CENTER: Fugitive couple appeared 'normal'

Call staff writer Teri Figueroa at 760-740-5442.