Jo Rosano hit the remote control, and an image of her son, held hostage by Colombian guerrillas, suddenly appeared on her living room television set.

"One way or another, I'm going to get him out of there," she said as she dabbed tears from her eyes and stared at a documentary about her son, Marc Gonsalves, one of three U.S. military contractors seized four years ago.

Rosano, a 59-year-old Italian immigrant who knew little about Colombia before her son's capture, has met with American officials, written letters to the Colombian president, launched a Web site, and even protested on the streets of Bogota, the Colombian capital — all to no avail.

Along the way, she has undergone a transformation similar to that of Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist whose soldier-son was killed in Iraq. Rosano has turned into a strident opponent of the U.S.-backed war on drugs in Colombia and charges that Washington has forgotten the hostages.

"This country put its nose where it shouldn't have, and my son and his colleagues got caught in the conflict," she said during an interview at her home in Bristol, Conn. "The U.S. government could care less."

Rosano describes her son as a kind of "accidental tourist."

She said he never expressed interest in foreign countries or the military while growing up. But the divorced mother of two, who worked for computer and insurance companies, couldn't afford to send him to college.

He joined the Air Force, training as an image interpreter. Eight years later, he landed a high-paying job in Colombia with Northrop Grumman to monitor fields of coca, the raw material for cocaine. It was Gonsalves' first trip abroad.

On Feb. 12, 2003, the crew's single-engine Cessna crash-landed into rebel-controlled territory, and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — known by the Spanish acronym FARC — marched Gonsalves, systems analyst Keith Stansell and pilot Thomas Howes into the jungle.

Rather than seeking a ransom, the rebels said they would hold the Americans and 43 other prominent hostages until President Alvaro Uribe agreed to pull soldiers and police from a patch of rural land and hold talks for a prisoner exchange.

"For two months, all I did was stay in my house and cry, losing my mind," Rosano said.

She and the other relatives of the Americans are in an especially difficult bind because they live so far from Colombia, said Olga Lucia Gomez, director of Free Country, a Bogota foundation that counsels the hostages' families.

"The sense of impotence and desperation is much greater," Gomez said.

Overshadowed by Iraq war

Rosano, however, got mad. The plight of the hostages — who were low-profile civilian contractors rather than active-duty military personnel — seemed to be forgotten in America amid the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which began a month after the three men were taken hostage.

Rosano traveled to Colombia to grill the American ambassador about the case.

And because U.S. prosecutors wanted a grieving relative in the courtroom, Rosano attended the recent Washington trial of Simon Trinidad, an extradited FARC leader convicted of conspiring to take the Americans hostage.

"Of all of the relatives, she has done the most to get the word out," said Patricia Medina, Stansell's girlfriend, who is raising the couple's

4-year-old twins. "She doesn't care what it takes. She will do anything to free them."

Rosano also has taken part in Bogota marches to demand that Uribe negotiate a prisoner exchange with the FARC. But Uribe, a conservative and President Bush's closest ally in Latin America, has refused to create a demilitarized zone because he fears the rebels will use it to run guns and plan more kidnappings.

Bitter about Uribe's hard-line stance, Rosano regularly slams the American and Colombian governments, even though officials at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota say they are working with Uribe to free the hostages.

"The embassy has no higher priority than the safe return of the three Americans," said a spokesman.

Oddly enough, Rosano rarely criticizes the guerrillas, who pull off hundreds of kidnappings every year. "I've never felt bitterness toward the FARC," she said.

Risky rescue proposed

By contrast, Uribe has proposed risky military rescue operations that can sometimes harm the hostages. In the documentary Held Hostage in Colombia, Stansell, sitting next to Gonsalves in a FARC camp, warns against a rescue attempt.

"You may come here to get us," he says, "but when you get here, we're going to be dead."

For Rosano, a bright spot was her meeting last month with Jhon Frank Pinchao, a Colombian police officer who escaped from the rebels after eight years in captivity.

Pinchao got to know the American hostages and reported to Rosano that they are holding up well.

"He told me that Marc has a Bible, that he's grown spiritually, and that he has made friends with one of the guards," Rosano said. "He also told me that Marc's very proud of his mom."