A Boulder woman returned to Colorado on Friday morning with the little Haitian boy she thought she might never see again.

Suzanne Schmidt, a third-grade teacher at Boulder Community School of Integrated Studies, was in the process of adopting 14-month-old Gavin from an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, when last week’s devastating earthquake destroyed his home and left his future and that of 130 other children in doubt.

“This is absolute elation,” she said after landing at Denver International Airport around 10:30 a.m. Friday. “I feel like crying because I’ve been holding it in for so long.”

Gavin was one of 53 orphans awaiting adoption who were evacuated Tuesday from the Bresma orphanage through the efforts of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Rep. Jason Altmire and officials from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which runs Children’s Hospital.

The American women who ran the orphanage are from Pennsylvania. Their building was severely damaged during the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, which flattened much of the city, and they had nearly run out of food and water by the weekend.

Schmidt flew to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, where Gavin’s release was facilitated by federal immigration authorities. Holding a wide-eyed and uncertain little boy in an infant carrier, Schmidt was met by friends, family and more than a dozen of her current and former students at Denver’s airport.

Read the rest of this report and see more photos of the reunion at DailyCamera.com.