MISSION: Go to college.
MOMENT OF TRUTH: As a youngster, Latrice set the highest personal goal she could imagine: to graduate from high school. Her advisers soon encouraged her to think bigger-about college-but Latrice dismissed that as a fantasy.
BACKSTORY: Latrice, of Chicago, was 14 when her family was evicted from their home and split up. Her older brother, Stephen, moved with Latrice and two younger siblings into their own apartment. A high school dropout, Stephen sold drugs to support the household. He also “made sure we stayed in school, got good grades, all of it-I love him so much for that,” Latrice says. Meanwhile, she worried constantly about her mother, who had never recovered emotionally from a violent mugging years before. “I made a plan to complete high school, to show my mother she wasn’t a failure, and to let my brother know that him taking care of me, I wasn’t taking that for granted.”
Latrice made her school, Hope College Prep, into a second home, getting involved in the debate team and student council. After taking a mini-course at Loyola University, she vowed to go to college.
Last winter, Stephen was arrested for selling drugs, and Latrice’s world fell apart again. In a letter from prison, Stephen apologized to Latrice for missing her high school graduation in June, and said his helping her to stay in school was the only thing in his life he’d done right.
OUTCOME: Later this month, Latrice, 18, will be a freshman at Loyola. The first in her family to go to college, she can’t wait to live in a dorm and make new friends. She plans to study psychology.
PAYOFF: “It was a dream, but now college will help me explore the world.”
