When it was announced by CNN that Barack Obama would become the next president of the United States, Haile Rivera, a Dominican-born U.S. citizen who gave up his comfortable life in the Bronx for an upstart presidential candidate, put his head down and cried.

“I was just thinking back on the moments on the campaign, all the places we’d been and all the people we’d talked to and all the B.S. we endured. It was all worth it,” Rivera said in a phone interview from his University Heights apartment. “It was the perfect ending to a long-fought campaign.”

While the rest of his campaign colleagues in Hialeah, Florida (20 minutes northwest of Miami) gave each other champagne showers, Rivera called his girlfriend, crying. A quick shout out to his mom in Philadelphia, crying. In a conversation with a senior Obama advisor, he couldn’t hold back the tears.

For Rivera, the victory was pure validation for what he’d sacrificed. Rivera quit his beloved job with the New York City Food Bank and suspended his candidacy for the City Council last spring to join the Obama campaign in Philadelphia. He went on to help organize and train volunteers in Virginia, North Carolina, Puerto Rico and, finally, south Florida. He worked long hours for little pay. But, in the end, he said, “I realized that everything had paid off.”

A couple of weeks ago, Rivera took another big risk, accepting an unpaid and unknown position with Obama’s transition team in Washington, D.C. He left the Bronx on Monday after taking out a loan so he could keep his University Heights apartment, where he and his girlfriend, Cosette Morillo (who joined him on the campaign trail) have lived for the past few years.

Rivera may have to work for free until sometime after Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration, but he’s optimistic. “One thing I’ve noticed is that they take care of you,” Rivera said.