Former Homeless High School Student Headed To College

Peggy Mosley confidently walks into her senior project, a final requirement before graduation. It centers around her charitable work providing clothing for families in need, a cause this19-year-old knows all too well from living on the streets.

"I was like what's going to happen the next day? Where am I going to sleep? What am I going to eat?" Peggy Mosley remembers. "It was very hard and at first I was scared. I just wanted to hide and go away."

When Mosley was a Sophomore, she and her family lived in a car in front of Wal-Mart.  She kept her situation a secret, afraid of what her friends would think.

"I was still scared that they would just me and be like, 'Oh, you're homeless. You don't have a shower. You stink. You don't have food,'" Mosley said. "It really scared me at first."

But before her Junior year, Mosley decided to share her secret of being homeless.

"I started telling some of my friends. I told my really close friends first and they were really accepting," Mosley said. They were far more accepting than I ever thought they would be. Then I was telling the whole class. They just really accepted me and they really loved on me and it helped so much."

That support kept Mosley on track to graduate and become the first person in her family to go to college.

"I wanted to stop the cycle of poverty in my family because we are way below the poverty line, so I wanted to make sure that my children in the future have a better future than I did," Mosley said.

The number of homeless students in Oklahoma City Public Schools has risen over the past decade. Today there are about 2200 students identified as homeless in the district.

Peggy graduated from Southeast High School last week She is already enrolled for the fall semester at Oklahoma Baptist University where she will major in art. She is paying for college herself and plans to get a job on top of her college work.