A Boulder woman returned to Colorado on Friday with the young 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 when last week’s devastating earthquake destroyed his home and left his future in doubt.
“This is absolute elation,” she said after landing at Denver International Airport on 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 and officials from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which runs Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where the children were brought.
The American women who ran the orphanage are from Pennsylvania. Their building was severely damaged during the quake.
Last weekend, Schmidt learned that Gavin, whom she had cared for in October, was alive but the orphanage was down to its last gallon of water and she didn’t know if the children would be evacuated.
Schmidt flew to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, where she spent almost all her time at Children’s Hospital. A courtroom was set up in the hospital to facilitate the release of the children to their adoptive parents.
