A FedEx driver surprised a boy with a new basketball and hoop after she noticed him playing with a broken one

(CNN) -- Every once in a while, as FedEx driver Aubrey Robinson made her regular delivery stops in a neighborhood in rural southeastern Indiana, she'd come across a young boy playing basketball with an old rusty, bent hoop.

After thinking about it for months, Robinson decided to get the boy, 11-year-old Elijah Maines, a new basketball and hoop -- the best her money could buy -- and had the hoop installed while the family wasn't home.

With her surprise gift she left a note: "Just wanted you and your son to have the best hoop that'll grow with him and all his friends," she wrote, signing it as "just one of the FedEx drivers in the area."

It was an instinctive act of kindness that led to a special friendship -- and memories that Elijah's family says will last a lifetime.

"It was crazy to me how happy he was with the bent up, broken hoop. Every time I saw him he was so joyful playing basketball. Seeing him so happy stuck with me," Robinson told CNN. "I just wouldn't stop thinking about it, I really wanted to get him a hoop. I was like, 'Is that weird?' But then I just said, you know what, he deserves it, I'm getting him a hoop."

After installing the hoop and leaving the note, Robinson didn't return to the neighborhood for weeks. She thought the family wouldn't realize it was her, she said, but she was more than satisfied to know in her heart she probably "made the kid's day."

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"When Elijah came home and I showed it to him, he got really emotional. He got teary-eyed but he's an 11-year-old boy so he really didn't want to admit he was crying," she laughed. "He just sat there for 10 minutes staring at the ball until it really touched him that she went out of her way to do something just for him."