From homeless to Harvard: Graduate sets sight on success
LOS ANGELES — Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near daze. The 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Williams is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl. As long as she can remember, Williams has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. Every morning, she made sure she didn't smell or look dishev...