PHOENIX — An Arizona woman overcame the challenges of growing up in foster care and has achieved the milestone of graduating a year and a half early from the University of Arizona.
According to the National Foster Youth Institute reports that foster care youth are three times more likely to drop out of high school.
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The Department of Child Services celebrated 20-year-old Emily Aragon's accomplishment on Friday afternoon, handing her a $1,500 check to support her future endeavors.
"So few foster kids ever graduate with a bachelor's, let alone a master's," Aragon said. "There's a huge statistical problem with foster kids going into homelessness, becoming teenage mothers, or falling into drug abuse and criminal histories."
Aragon said she was in foster care since she was a child with her brothers and sisters.
"I was just in a home that we didn't quite have enough to eat," Aargon recalled.
Throughout her foster care experience, Aragon said she moved through multiple placements and landed in a group home before she moved in with her mother Kelly Fogerlie.
"There's a lot of people in this room that have helped me along the path, especially my mother," Aragon said.
Fogerlie said when Aragon moved in at 15, she was behind in some of her classes but worked hard to graduate as her high school's valedictorian.
"[She] had no idea what a GPA was and all that kind of stuff but she soaked everything up like a like a sponge, and it was just a good match," Fogerlie said.
Brenda Peral, a supervisor with the Department of Child Services and Aragon's case worker, emphasized the importance of support to youth in the foster care system.
"There's a lot of resources out there for kiddos that are aging out of foster care are ready to go to post-secondary education," Peral explained, "so it [was] just a matter of me being resourceful and giving that information to her and foster family so they [could] take that to the next step."
Aragon currently works as a registered behavioral technician and plans to pursue a master's degree in Applied Behavioral Analysis, specializing in working with autistic children.
Aragon said her message to others is to keep going no matter what obstacles lay ahead.
"Be spiteful," Aragon said. "Prove people wrong when they think you can't succeed."
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