At just 17, Taylor was homeless and alone.

She’d witnessed her mom’s beatings at the hands of one of her stepfathers, as she cowered in the bathtub until the cops arrived. 

No one had protected her as one of her mom’s many boyfriends sexually abused her. She’d lived in a car because her mom chose alcohol instead of paying rent, and gone hungry for days because there was no food. In summer, she’d wear jackets to hide her bruises.

Taylor is one of the success stories in a terrifying epidemic of homeless youth in America. 

Despite being pulled out of school to care for her younger siblings (her mom had five children to three different fathers) and missing her sophomore year, she was determined to graduate high school and be the first in her family to graduate from college.

Today, she is not just a college graduate, she’s a homeowner, and working in one of the most violent schools in Florida.

Her story is featured in the new book If You See Them: Young, Unhoused And Alone In America by Vicki Sokolik. 

Taylor was determined to become the first in her family to graduate college

Taylor on the day she moved into her dorm room at St. Leo University in Florida

An estimated 4.2 million teens and young people experience homelessness in the US every year – 700,000 of them are alone, like Taylor.

These are teens who are not living with a parent or guardian. They are not eligible for foster care because they left home and were not taken out of their home by child protective services. They aren’t ‘runaways’ – they are escaping abuse or neglect, surviving on free school meals, joining school sports teams so they can shower, and sleeping on friends’ couches, in parks, or on the streets.

‘My mom had an unrealistic idea that a daughter was to stay home and not attend school to clean the house,’ she said. ‘My grandmother instilled this “value” in her, causing her to be a seventh-grade dropout.

‘My mom never worked the whole time I lived with her. We lived on child support from my father and then from my little brother and sister’s father as well. That was really the only source of our income. We kind of just went or lived wherever we could afford to go.

‘When I was in elementary school, I watched my mom get beat up by my stepfather. One of the times he beat my mom, she was pregnant with my little brother.

‘Many of my stepdads were arrested throughout my childhood. The culmination of these events was the day that my older sister stepped in to try and protect my mom and my little sister from our third stepdad. I hid in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed while my mom and my sister got arrested.

‘No one protected me from the 34-year-old man that my mom brought around regularly and who touched me sexually when I was 13.

‘I saved my lunch money so that I could pay for a prepaid cell phone. It was more important to make sure I had a way to call or text someone if I was hurt or my mom was hurt. Other times I didn’t eat for days because we were homeless and living in the car.

‘My mom chose alcohol over having a home. We were perpetually living in our car or bouncing around between strange men’s homes.’

When she was 16, Taylor begged her mom to let her move in with a friend so she could finish her 11th grade year and still be on track for graduation. It was a brief time of stability – of regular meals, of going to school during the day and attending night school to work on the classes she’d missed. ‘It felt like I had this nice little thing going,’ she said.

‘But as soon as summer came, my mom was like, “You don’t get to stay there anymore. You have to come with me.” She had taken me out of a place where I was stable because she was lonely. But going with her meant being nowhere. We were bouncing around, doubling up with people she knew, or living in her car. As I watched her drinking spiral out of control, the bad decisions became too much for me to bear.’

On the Fourth of July, during a drunken party when her mom tried to force her to have a drink, she snapped.

‘Mom took me outside and told me I had embarrassed her. She pushed me and I pushed her back, and I was like, “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again. I’m done.”

‘Then around 2am, I went to the kitchen. I passed a room where my mom was on top of some guy, having sex with him. She didn’t see me. I couldn’t take it anymore.

‘I found mail with the address on it to figure out where we were. I didn’t even know we were in Sarasota. I grabbed my backpack and my cat and started walking down the road. It was my Independence Day.’

Taylor with Vicki Sokolik, the author and founder of the non-profit SRN

An estimated 4.2 million teens and young people experience homelessness in the US every year, 700,000 of them are alone 

She moved in temporarily with her sister and her boyfriend, got a job, and enrolled in her fourth high school, still determined to graduate on time.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in three teens will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. What stopped Taylor becoming a tragic statistic was in part being put in touch with the non-profit Starting Right, Now (SRN), which helps provide young people in Florida with safe housing, academic support, access to social services, life skill classes, and mentoring.

Taylor moved into an SRN-leased apartment and decided to look for the father she’d never met.

He was married and had other kids when he’d started an affair with her mom and, when her mom became pregnant, he ended the relationship and wanted Taylor to remain a secret. Her mom threatened to expose the affair unless he paid regular child support.

When Taylor left home on the Fourth of July, those payments should have started going directly to Taylor.

‘My biological father lived in Minnesota. That was not a secret because my mom would get a check from him every month with his name on it. I have his last name. But the address on the check was a PO box, so I didn’t know how to contact him, other than that my mom told me he owned a car dealership.

‘One day at school I started googling him, and I found his car dealership. I wanted to call and tell him I ran away, that I didn’t live with my mom anymore. That he didn’t need to send her money. I finally got up the guts to do that. I called the dealership, and I was like, “Hi, can I please speak with… and I said my dad’s name.”‘

Taylor informed her father that she’d left her mom. He thanked her for letting him know. Then she asked if he’d be willing to send the monthly checks directly to her, since it was supposed to be child support. Her father agreed and took down her address. Taylor had hoped he would want to meet in person, but he didn’t suggest it.

‘How could he not want a relationship with his own daughter?’ she kept asking.

A couple weeks later, Taylor received his check in the mail. She was very excited, but part of her excitement had nothing to do with the money. In her mind, the check was a first step toward a loving relationship.

Homeless teens survive on free school meals, join school sports teams so they can shower, and sleep on friends’ couches, in parks, or on the streets

But the next morning, her father left her a voicemail: ‘I’m so sorry, Taylor, don’t cash that check. I had to cancel it. Your mom found out why I didn’t send her the money and she’s threatening to tell my wife everything.’

SRN stepped in and ‘reminded’ her father that if he refused to send the checks to Taylor, as required by law, he’d be served with a lawsuit – his choice. His reluctant support allowed her to continue her education. But he never made any attempt to meet his daughter.

‘To this day, I still have the envelope and the canceled check and letter,’ Taylor said. ‘It is the only thing I have from him.’

Taylor graduated high school in 2012 and continued to St. Leo University for her bachelor’s degree. She earned her Master of Social Work from Florida State University in 2018 and is currently a social worker for Hillsborough County Schools.

Years into her career, she saw a story in a local paper about rampant violence at what was deemed the ‘third most violent school in Florida’. Gangs of students were shoving their peers and teachers into lockers and beating them. Some of the kids had been beaten so badly they’d blanked out. A teacher had an arm broken.

The county was looking for a social worker and, believing her experience and insight could help her relate to the students, Taylor applied and got the job. 

She’s also a homeowner, providing safety and stability for herself and her cats.

The last time Taylor saw her mom was in a Mexican restaurant shortly after she’d left. She said she wanted Taylor to come back home, and Taylor said, ‘What home?’ Her mom was living in a car at the time.

‘Then she started talking about killing herself and how she’d do it… how she can’t swim. She talked about walking into the ocean and wanting to never come back,’ Taylor said.

‘I left and I never saw her ever again.’

If You See Them: Young, Unhoused, And Alone in America by Vicki Sokolik is published by Spiegel & Grau