Working Hard, Studying and Still Seeking a Home Latoya Ford, who is studying phlebotomy and hopes to become an emergency medical technician, will lose her room at Covenant House, a shelter for homeless young people, early next year. If you called Latoya Ford, 23, an old soul, she would take it as a compliment, even if the variety of toys that she owns might suggest a younger spirit. Recorded Mon.: Includes $424,833 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. When she was 7, Ms. Ford and her younger brother, Brian, were adopted after years in foster care. Their adoptive mother, Dorothy Ford, was in her late 60s, and with her years came much wisdom. "I learned a lot of common sense from her," Ms. Ford said. With my peers and people my age, I'll tell them they aren't thinking with common sense, and they'd say I was speaking like their grandmother would speak. But that's how I was brought up. You got to think about certain things, think about how you approach people. Ms. Ford understands responsibility as well as she understands how to approach others. She has spent the last four years in homeless shelters, but works 33 to 44 hours a week as a certified nursing assistant at Beth Israel Medical Center, and earlier this year held down a second job at T. J. Maxx as a sales associate. Yet Ms. Ford still manages to inject some fun into her life at the shelter. Boxes of K'nex roller coasters, Lego sets and Nerf guns accent her shared bedroom, all cures for boredom. Ms. Ford also said she tried to make it to a roller-skating rink in New Jersey at least once a week. That fusion of sensibilities - self-discipline balanced with playfulness - has helped Ms. Ford navigate a life that has dealt her a fair share of setbacks. In 2002, Ms. Ford's adoptive mother died. She and Brian were then placed in the care of their adult adoptive sister, Marzella Riley. "Nobody else stepped up, so she stepped up," Ms. Ford said. I guess she felt like she had an obligation to take us. The Ford siblings moved from Florence, S.C., where they had been living since their adoption, back to their hometown, New York City, to be with Ms. Riley in the Bronx. Ms. Ford was just 13. "Growing up, I always wanted her to come visit," Ms. Ford said of her sister. I always thought my mom was so boring. She would come bake cookies with me, show me how to do certain stuff. But when we came to live with her, it was another story. It was arguing all the time. It was "You're not my mother." "Around this time, doctors told Ms. Ford, who had already been coping with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, that she had anxiety and depression. At 16, Ms. Ford was enrolled in classes at the South Bronx Job Corps, while her brother was sent to Buxton School, a preparatory school in Williamstown, Mass. She earned her high school diploma at Job Corps along with a certified accounting certificate. After she graduated in 2008, Ms. Ford said, Ms. Riley told her that she had to find her own place to live. With nowhere to go, she turned to Green Chimneys, a residential program for children in Putnam County, N.Y. A year and a half later, Green Chimneys placed her in a room at Covenant House in Manhattan, a shelter for teenagers and young adults and an affiliate of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Brian was accepted to Syracuse University after graduating from high school, and is pursuing a business degree there. The two are in frequent contact. Once Ms. Ford entered Covenant House, she conducted a serious evaluation of her ambitions and decided she wanted to become an emergency medical technician. She soon received the credentials to become a certified nursing assistant. To support Ms. Ford's future financial independence, Covenant House is paying for her to take phlebotomy classes at the Manhattan Institute. Catholic Charities secured a grant of $385 from the Neediest Cases Fund for a laptop to help with her studies. Covenant House is also helping Ms. Ford find permanent housing - with a two-year time limit, she can stay there only until the end of January. She is searching for housing, and to that end, Covenant House puts $80 of her earnings each week into a savings account; the money will be returned to her to put toward an apartment. Ms. Ford's empathy for older people, and those in need, it seems, will quite likely hold her in good stead in a nursing career. "How would you feel if you were sitting up in a hospital bed and you didn't have anybody to come see you or visit you or talk to you or have a conversation?" she said. That's why old people don't talk to anybody, because nobody talks to them. I'm really good with old people. It was always so much easier to talk to the older generation.