Former foster kid ready to thrive with career in medical lab science
“Where do the five children sleep?” Miami Police Officer Elba Valdes wondered as she surveyed the disheveled apartment.
There was only one bed in the whole place, no kitchen table, and clothes were scattered around. Valdes had been called there to investigate a domestic dispute between the mother and her teenage son.
“Where do you go to school? What’s your GPA?” Valdes asked the teen, Kevin Mora, who was about 16.
They talked, and she saw his promise. “I knew Kevin could do something,” Valdes said. “It was just the environment.”
It was the start of an enduring seven-year friendship. Mora was eventually taken from his mother’s custody and placed in a foster group home until he turned 18. He has been on his own ever since.
Now 23, Mora is graduating today from University of Central Florida and plans to celebrate that milestone with the Miami cop who supported him along the way.
“Holy smokes,” Mora says now.
“Nobody has ever been this nice to me before.”
Mora is one of about 7,800 students who will graduate from UCF during the three days of spring commencement ceremonies, including nearly 875 engineering and computer science majors, 1,000 business majors and 800 from the College of Arts and Humanities.
Among them are 11 students, like Mora, who went through foster care in their youth — the highest number of foster kids to graduate from UCF in a semester since 2011, according to the UCF Knight Alliance Network, which helps them adjust to college. The state pays the tuition of foster-care kids.
Valdes, a petite woman with a no-nonsense tone, quickly became a surrogate mother to Mora. She was nearing the end of her 31-year career on the force when she met him.
In her police car, she drove him to buy a cellphone so they could stay in touch. She has never stopped paying the bill.
Every other Sunday, she visited him at his group home and took him to restaurants or unannounced trips to buy school supplies.
Mora woke up about 4 a.m. to ride the city bus to William Turner Technical High School because the group home was farther away from his old neighborhood. School felt like an escape, something to look forward to every day. He was enrolled in a special program for highschoolers seeking to become medical lab assistants.
Though some might think the lessons were gross, Mora was fascinated by the science.
“He has an enormous desire to learn,” said one of his high school teachers, Miriam Mella.
Mella knew about Mora’s troubled childhood, but it was hard to tell anything was wrong because he rarely complained; his grades were strong, his attendance good.
“He was coming from a broken home, and in spite of everything he flourished,” Mella said. Mora was nominated for an “unsung hero” award his senior year of high school. By then, he was living in an apartment, too old for the group home.
After high school graduation, Valdes took him out to a fancy restaurant, where he ate steak and lobster for the first time.
“You need to get out of Miami and go to a university,” Valdes often told him. So he applied to UCF.
She drove him to freshman orientation at the university, where he started in fall 2012.
“I’ll always be here for you,” she reminded him.
On campus, his professors noticed the soft-spoken man with impeccable manners who was mastering the skills of his medical lab sciences major.
Early on, he made friends with whom he would play video games and go on latenight Taco Bell runs. He began working at Orlando Regional Medical Center last summer while he juggled his studies.
Sometimes his busy schedule helped him forget the past.
“It’s just that drive to do something, to be successful, to make something out of myself. I keep myself busy, and that definitely helps. You don’t have time to reflect and think about the sad parts,’’ he said.
He felt as if he learned by trial and error, he said, because he was on his own. There wasn’t a parent in his ear, reminding him to save money or study harder.
“It’s kind of like you’re forced to grow up fast; otherwise, you’ll just drown,” Mora said.
This semester, Mora was offered a full-time job at ORMC to work in the microbiology lab. He recently passed his national boards.
“We already knew we wanted to have him,” said Lisa Lambert, the hospital lab coordinator. “He fit right in and immediately became a member of our family.”
He has stayed in contact with Valdes and Mella, who are expected to cheer him on in CFE Arena when he graduates.
Post-collegiate life for Mora will be starting his career, renting an apartment and perhaps going to medical school — an option since his tuition waiver lasts until he is 28.
“The best part about graduation is what comes after this,” Mora said.