My husband became a ward of the state (not CA) when he was 10. He completed his GED and was granted emancipated minor status when he was 17 – he was a pretty bright kid. His last foster mother ran a residential treatment center for severely emotionally disturbed adolescents, and hired him as a house parent/tutor/employment trainer after he was legally out of her care (she did that with a lot of her aged-out kids if they were capable of handling their younger peers before they aged out). He eventually rose to the position of president of the board of directors.

Between leaving her care and becoming her employee, he got a job on his own, work on a loading dock – it was what he could get – but was fired in less than a week. He becamed homeless, sleeping in a car that his older sister had helped him buy.

If he hadn’t had the chance to go work for his foster mother, he probably would have been dead before he was 30 – a lot of people who knew him in juvenile detention or in foster care had predicted it. They were very surprised when they got our wedding announcement a few months after his 30th birthday. He’s 53 now.