Teens’ Past No Barrier to Achieving

Tiffany Cohan and Regina Pinga have parallel pasts.

Broken families. Physical and emotional scars. Endless nights filled with tears. Growing up in foster care.

Almost a third of young adults with such pasts end up homeless after they outgrow the foster-care system. But Cohan and Pinga are in their first semester of college, attending classes, trying out recipes like Filipino egg rolls and feeling like they can do anything.

Counselors help them plan their studies, manage their finances and confront their personal demons. Full scholarships cover their tuition, books, room and board. Free medical insurance prods them toward taking care of their health.

All of it is provided by the new Guardian Scholar program at Cal State Fullerton, specifically for the “graduates” of the foster-care system. Nine students are in the program this year, the only one of its kind in the state, according to the state Department of Social Services.

“It’s so hard to get on your feet for kids like us who have been in group homes or foster homes or in the system,” said Cohan, 18.

Not only do these teenagers come from bumpy backgrounds, but many are suddenly emancipated from highly structured foster-care arrangements with little idea of how to run their own lives. Most college students can turn to their parents for support and advice; those released from foster care are often on their own.

Cohan doesn’t know how old she was when her parents divorced or where her childhood went. She remembers living in many households and baby-sitting younger relatives.

Eventually, she was placed with a foster family as a teenager.

“I didn’t have a childhood,” Cohan said. “I grew up fast.”

Pinga, 19, said she spent much of her young adult life on “the bad side” of Long Beach doing “bad things.” She ran away from home and would numb her painful feelings about herself with cocaine, marijuana and alcohol, financing her substance abuse by stealing cars with other runaway teens.

“I was in a lot of trouble a lot of times,” Pinga said.

The trouble came to a startling halt when a car Pinga had stolen crashed into a telephone pole. She was brought into foster care.

Once under foster care, both Pinga and Cohan said, they realized they could turn their lives around. They decided to go to college.

The prospect wasn’t unthinkable, because both had high grades and most foster-care “graduates” are eligible for federal funding.

But basic financial aid isn’t enough, as Amber Peterson, another student in the program, found out last year.

She thought it would be easy when she began at Cal State Fullerton last fall armed with a four-year scholarship. Peterson, now 19, moved from a well-supervised group home in Orange to a dorm on campus.

A perfect life for an 18-year-old ready to break out on her own, it seemed, but Peterson couldn’t handle her newfound freedom.

She watched her grades plummet and money disappear. She flunked out and ran her credit card bills so high that she fell into debt.

“I’m so much smarter than that,” she said. “I was always so responsible.”

But Peterson said she didn’t have anyone to point her in the right direction.

Now she does.

Program director Kevin Colaner is there for her. The assistant dean of student affairs helped her get back into school this semester. Now they--as well as a graduate assistant--meet once a week just to see how things are going.

“Most people in Olive Crest [home for abused children], I don’t know what happened to them,” Peterson said. “They just dropped off the face of the earth.

“If they knew that they had a chance to go on and succeed in life, they would do it,” she said.

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The support is what makes the program.

“Those of us who had the fortune to have great parents had someone to go to for advice and help,” said Gene Howard, director of the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange. “These kids don’t have anybody like that they can go to. By having the university faculty and staff, they really create that substitute family.”

Susan Porter, director of principal gifts in University Advancement, envisioned the Guardian Scholars after a disheartening visit to Orangewood in spring 1997.

The program, developed in collaboration with Orangewood, became a reality when an anonymous donor came forward with $50,000.

Then Ron Davis, a Cal State Fullerton alumnus and former CEO of Perrier Group of America, said he wanted to help, too. He donated $200,000.

Colaner hopes to accept 10 freshmen into the program next year. Already, foster-care agencies have contacted him with lists of students wanting to join.

“They’re really excited with the program because they recognize it’s never been done,” Porter said.

Colaner and Porter hope the program will serve as an instrument of hope to the other kids in the foster system.

“There are so many kids out there who never believed they could go to college,” Porter said. “They never thought it was a possibility. We’re telling them it is.”

Cohan and Pinga, who never met each other before college, now make a home of their dorm, decorated with black-and-white posters and vases of dried flowers from boyfriends.

Monday night, Cohan was getting ready for Halloween, coloring pumpkins and passing out candy to disadvantaged children who were trick-or-treating a little early.

Pinga still spends weekends in Long Beach, visiting her boyfriend and some family members. She tries to keep close ties with her family and Filipino heritage.

Peterson misses dorm life, but enjoys having her own space in west Anaheim. She likes doing her own grocery shopping and cooking--and not having to clean if she doesn’t want to.

Peterson still keeps in close contact with her case manager, who is almost like a big sister.

The three young women realize that their success or failure is their own, so they don’t party too hard and they study often.

Pinga, majoring in biology, wants to be a medical examiner. Cohan, a liberal studies major, hopes to teach fifth grade.

Peterson, a psychology major, thinks she might be a counselor or lawyer, a job that helps people.

“I still think about it now,” Peterson said. “I can do whatever I want. No one’s going to make me do what I don’t want to do.

“It’s my life.”