A girl who suffered rough beginnings after being born in prison is now looking forward to studying law at Harvard.
18-year-old Sky Castner from Montgomery County, Texas, had a tough first few years of her life after being born in Galveston County Jail while her mother was serving time for her crimes.
She was later picked up by her father from the prison and the man went on to raise her as a single dad.
In her early years, Sky developed a great passion for learning and became a “voracious reader.” She is now set to graduate from her high school as one of the top students and is set to behind her journey at Harvard in the fall.
“Girl set a goal to go to Harvard in elementary school despite being born in poverty. Received full scholarship to attend Harvard in 2023,” Mona Hamby, Sky’s longtime mentor, said.
Hamby and Castner first met when the girl was still in elementary school and her teachers decided to assign her a mentor thinking she could profit greatly from additional support because she was an avid reader and aspiring intellectual.
“I was given a paper about her. Her hero was Rosa Parks, her favorite food was tacos from Dairy Queen and she loved to read. I thought this sounds like a bright little girl. I still have that paper today,” Hamby recalled in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
“She told me: ‘I’ve been to jail.’ I said: ‘No, that can’t be right.’ I knew that I can’t just go eat lunch with this kid once a week, she needed more.”
Speaking out about her unusual life story was also Sky who said she was looking forward to taking her education to the next level.
“It was a very different environment than I grew up in and that’s not a bad thing. Everything that Mona taught me was very valuable in the same way that everything that I went through before Mona was very valuable,” she said in a tribute to her mentor who inspired her to pursue her dreams and guided her to get a scholarship at Harvard.
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