By Rachel Wong, KALW Crosscurrents
Dejon Lewis was 11 years old when child protective services arrived to take him and his twin sister away from their mother, whom he says is a drug addict. But instead of giving themselves over to the state, the two children made a run for it. Lewis says they stayed with a family friend for a while, but eventually they turned themselves in, and that is when he entered the foster care system. Since then, Lewis has bounced around a lot.
“It’s hard to live when you’re just living with strangers and strangers and strangers, and no relatives. But I know down the road that that wouldn’t last forever, so I had to figure out how to be more independent,” he says.
Now he is 21, and he is emancipated from foster care, but he is still not settled yet. Only a few months ago, things got especially bad. He lost his apartment and struggled to find a place to sleep.
Read the complete story at KALW Crosscurrents.
