After ricocheting through a dozen foster homes over the past six years, including a detour to a Utah home for disturbed girls, Janea’s life as a foster child ends today. Purple hair and tattoos hidden beneath her cap and gown, she beams with pride as she graduates from La Quinta High School, class of 2001. (GAIL FISHER / Los Angeles Times)
With her fiery-red dyed hair, skin-tight dress and platform shoes, Janea gyrates on the dance floor. She is one of the hundred or so Orange County’s newest foster-care graduates, attending a graduation party. In a few days she will be on her own. Declared unadoptable, she spent the past six years of her life in and out of group homes, mental hospitals and lockdown facilities. (GAIL FISHER / Los Angeles Times)
A week after emancipating out of the Orange County foster system, Janea lands a job at Walmart. It’s part time, with no benefits and a few dimes above minimum wage, but it’s a paycheck. (GAIL FISHER / Los Angeles Times)
