The biggest surprise Monday for 10-year-old Rainn Sheppard, competing at the Junior Olympics in Houston and far from the New York City homeless shelter she shares with her two sisters and mother, wasn’t the gold medal she won in the 3,000 meters.

It was the arrival of her mother.

Rainn and her sisters, 11-year-old Tai and 8-year-old Brooke, had hoped merely to make their mother proud, since she couldn’t afford to make the trip from the Brooklyn shelter herself. But as Rainn was being interviewed by a local reporter Monday at the race venue, Tonia Handy surprised her daughter with a giant hug.

“I couldn’t believe she was here,” Rainn said in a phone interview. “I still can’t believe it.”

After The Associated Press wrote Friday about the family’s challenges, a New York philanthropist contacted Handy and bought her a plane ticket.