Homeless Teen Makes It Into Harvard

A teen in rural North Carolina is beating some seriously steep odds: Abandoned by her parents over the summer, Dawn Loggins has gone from being homeless to finding a new home at Harvard in the fall, reports the Charlotte Observer. Along the way, she eventually moved in with a friend's mother and worked at her high school in the morning as a janitor, starting at 6am. And she still managed to keep her grades up. “I’ve had to work to get where I am,” she says. “I think everything that happened to me was preparing me for what’s to come.”

Even before her mom and stepfather took off for Tennessee without her, Dawn endured what sounds like years of shaky parenting and poverty, and sometimes had to study by candlelight in an overcoat, notes the Observer. “This might seem strange, but I love my parents," she says. "They meant well." (More Dawn Loggins stories.)