Carsi remembers her first day of high school. The anxiety, confusion and uncertainty.
While other freshmen were checking out the campus, comparing class schedules and looking for their lockers, Carsi was worried about how she would eat and where she would sleep.
The teenager was experiencing homelessness – without her parents. Her father left after the family was evicted from their home. Her mother started living in a van.
Carsi had to figure it out. Fast.
“I was just trying to push through,” she says. “I was so stressed out with everything happening.”
She started living with her best friend’s family, who started taking care of Carsi.
“She was my life line,” Carsi said of her friend, whose father became a father figure to her. “My friend and I were connected at the hip. As long as I was in high school, I didn’t really make many friends.”
Avoiding friends helped her from explaining the situation of experiencing homelessness.
“It was really hard to explain, it was embarrassing,” she said. “I didn’t like being considered homeless. I didn’t want that to be at the forefront of people’s minds. Everyone else had a bed, a house and parents to go home to. There were a lot of things that I missed out on. I didn’t have the typical high school experience.”
Despite the numerous challenges, she excelled at school. Carsi says her mother – despite her issues – always stressed the importance of education.
“With what I’ve been through with my mother, I know to be successful, you need to have an education,” Carsi said. “You get nowhere without it.”
And Carsi is definitely committed to education and improving her life.
“Carsi is a high achiever, she is brilliant,” said Aurora Packard, SAFE Program Director for Bright Futures for Youth. “She has always taken academics seriously.”
‘I’m beginning to realize how much people want to help me’
Carsi
The SAFE (Stability, Access, Foundation and Empowerment) program helps transition-age youth experiencing homelessness. The program provides academic, social and emotional support, and life-skills training to youth experiencing homelessness. SAFE also assists these youth with much-needed social services, from access to health care to food stamps. A high school counselor connected Carsi with the SAFE program.
“Everything was so overwhelming,” she said of the paperwork and process to get help. “It was kind of a revelation that there are people who are willing to help me. The program is out there to help people like me. They actually get stuff done.”
Soon Carsi saw a doctor for the first time in three years and college, once a dream, became a realistic goal after high school.
“I would have never figured out how to apply for college or financial aid” without the SAFE program, she said. “I’m beginning to realize how much people want to help me.”
She has moved from her friend’s house and now lives with her boyfriend’s family. Her boyfriend recently joined the Army.
“He is the most important person in my life,” Carsi said. “They’ve become my family. His mom is very much like my real mom.”
Today, she is enrolled at Sierra College and pursuing a computer science degree.
“I am the biggest nerd and reader,” laughed Carsi. “It’s something that I want to grow in. And my interest has only grown over the years.”
‘There’s so much you can give back to the world’
Carsi credits the SAFE program for helping her access and navigate the process of social services, such as financial aid for college and health care services. And she appreciates how her longtime friend and boyfriend’s families provided housing, support and, most importantly, an abundance of love.
“I wasn’t your textbook definition of homeless,” she said. “I’m very grateful to have a very good friend whose family took me in.”
But Carsi was definitely a youth experiencing homelessness, Packard said.
Her parents abandoned a high school freshman without a home.
“I don’t like receiving pity,” Carsi said of her life the past several years. “I’m not broken. I’m not hopeless or scared of anything.”
And she is ready for life’s challenges and the hard work needed to reach her goals, including a college education that will allow her to improve the lives of others.
“I want to grow in my education as much as I possibly can,” she says. “It’s not a matter of being successful, but making a difference. I want to help and benefit people who are in the same situation (of experiencing homelessness). There’s so much stigma around it. I want to take away the shame. There’s so much you can give back to the world.”