Christopher and Amy Savoie at their wedding in February 2009.

Photo courtesy of Annie DeGroot

When Christopher and Amy Savoie gathered with friends and relatives in early August at a waterside restaurant in East Greenwich to celebrate their six-month anniversary, the couple seemed on top of the world.

Savoie — a graduate of Bishop Hendricken High School and the University of Rhode Island — had already achieved international stature as an innovator in the world of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals and his pharmaceutical company, GNI Ltd., with offices in Japan, had been named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top emerging businesses in Asia.

Now, with his new wife, Amy, also a native Rhode Islander, Chris was settling into life at home in Franklin, Tenn.

His uncle, Walter Kachinas of Cranston, said one of the things that struck him at the reception was how proud Christopher was of his children — Isaac, 8, and Rebecca, 6, both from an earlier marriage, and the three children that Amy brought from her earlier marriage.

“I spoke with Chris quite a bit, and I can’t tell you how much he loved these kids,” Kachinas recalled Tuesday. “They were such a close-knit family as far as I could tell.”

Relatives said they had no inkling then, and still can’t believe it now, that Savoie would be held in a jail in Fukuoka, Japan, on charges of seeking to abduct his son and daughter.

In a chain of events that has now drawn international attention, Savoie recently set out for Japan after learning that his Japanese-born ex-wife Noriko — whose divorce decree allowed her to take the children on summer vacations in Japan — had not returned the children to Tennessee before the start of school.

According to a report on CNN, Savoie became alarmed when he could not find his ex-wife or the children in her Tennessee home, and called her father in Japan to ask if he knew what was going on. The father reportedly replied, “Don’t worry, the children are here.”

It was then, according to the news reports, that Savoie took matters into his own hands. He flew to Japan, spotted his ex-wife walking the children to school, and grabbed them from the street. He immediately drove to the nearest U.S. Consulate to get passports for the children.

A friend and witness, Shannon Higgins, told a televison station in Nashville that he saw Savoie get through one barricade set up by Japanese police who had been tipped off by the ex-wife, only to find he could not get through the consulate gates.

“He was there — Chris — with a little girl in his arms crying. ‘Please help, please help. We’re American citizens. Please let us through,’ ” Higgins told the CBS affilate. “They simply did not open the gate. They did not let us through.”

Amy Savoie, who grew up in Narragansett and also attended URI, told CBS News that she understands that her husband has been charged. Another report said Savoie potentially faces five years imprisonment.

She said she fears that even though Noriko Savoie was the one who first broke the law by violating the custody order issued in Tennessee, it may well be her husband who ends up in jail.

According to CNN, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo issued a statement Tuesday that seemed to offer little solace. It said “Japan is an important partner and friend of the U.S., but on this issue, our points of view differ. Our two nations approach divorce and child-rearing differently. Parental abductions are not considered a crime in Japan.”

Anthony Kachinas, another of Christopher Savoie’s uncles, of Foster, said that when he heard the story of his nephew getting arrested, he was appalled, especially after he heard that he had gotten as far as the gates of the U.S. Consulate and would not be let in.

“As a disabled Vietnam veteran, I know how slow the government can be to act. My heart goes out to Amy and Chris. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t let him in.”

Annie DeGroot, president of EpiVax, which has been working on an HIV/AIDS vaccine, said she had met Chris and his children on business trips in Japan.

“He is a hyper-intelligent individual with a huge amount of promise,” she said, remarking that his company was one of the first biotech companies with a product for liver disease.

“I think this is so heartbreaking,” DeGroot, who is a professor in URI’s College of Environment and Live Sciences, said Tuesday night. “I know many families would die for their children, and to have them actually taken away is so sad. I can imagine the pain. I feel their pain.”

According to relatives, Savoie was raised by his father, now deceased, and his stepmother, Beatrice Savoie, after his mother died nine days after giving birth. He was an honor student at Bishop Hendricken High School and after graduation from URI, moved to Japan, where he earned his doctorate.

Walter Kachinas said he doesn’t know how close his nephew stayed to his Catholic faith, but “I would bet you now that he’s spending a lot of time on his knees.”

rdujardi@projo.com

Correction: Several locations have been corrected in this story.