Lalita Booth broke loose from the shackles of poverty and homelessness and transformed into one of UCF\u2019s elite as a Truman Scholar and Harvard hopeful. How she did it \u2014 that\u2019s where the story gets interesting.<\/p>\n
Sitting in front of a classroom of UCF LEAD Scholars<\/a>, 27-year-old Lalita Booth looks like any other junior \u2014 sporting unassuming khaki-colored cargo pants, worn leather sandals, an oversized sweatshirt and a long ponytail of wavy, auburn locks still drying from her morning shower. The brown-eyed, freckle-faced student blends in with the roomful of her peers in every way.<\/p>\n That is, until she opens her mouth.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re looking at the face of a child abuse survivor, a perpetual runaway, a high school dropout,\u201d she says as idle chitchat turns to complete silence.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a teenage mother, a homeless parent and a former welfare recipient.\u201d<\/p>\n As jaws drop, she paints a vivid picture of her tumultuous past. Her parents divorced when she was young, by 12 she was a runaway pro \u2014 asking for permission to go somewhere and then simply not returning for a few days or weeks \u2014 and when discontent and anger intensified she took a month-long trip through several states by hitching rides with truckers.<\/p>\n After her spontaneous, vagabond-style trip, she never returned to high school and rarely showed her face at home either. Instead, she became proficient in \u201ccouch surfing\u201d at friends\u2019 homes. When there was no couch to crash on, the teen would take nightly refuge behind the closest dumpster and rest in the park during the day. \u201cWhen you are 15 and alone, you don\u2019t want the police or anyone else to notice you,\u201d she says intensely.<\/p>\n In hindsight, she justifies her unconventional ways. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t some sort of well-thought-out decision to be a wild child,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was the only way I knew to be. So I never really questioned it.\u201d<\/p>\n Searching for Stability<\/strong><\/p>\n To understand how it got to this point, where a 15-year-old was struggling to survive on the streets, you have to rewind to Booth\u2019s early childhood. The whirlwind of instability rushed in when her parent\u2019s Asheville, NC, home was foreclosed on, forcing her family to live a nomadic lifestyle, hopping from town to town as evictions were slapped on the door or jobs were lost. \u201cI\u2019ve lived in 80 different homes in my 27 years,\u201d she says. \u201cI bounced around like a ping-pong ball.\u201d<\/p>\n For Booth, it was a time filled with physical torment, emotional distress and utter loneliness. \u201cOccasionally,\u201d she says, \u201cI just couldn\u2019t be inside my house.\u201d Struggling to clearly explain the feeling, she mentions it likely stems from events of abuse in her past, so traumatic that she can\u2019t recall them today. \u201cIt\u2019s been a pervasive thing throughout my life,\u201d she says. Sitting at home for her was akin to cabin fever. And running away was a desperate attempt to keep her emotions at bay.<\/p>\n Her ramshackle plan: stay in constant motion and develop a \u201csocial family\u201d of peers who were just as broke as she was financially and emotionally. She felt safe and happy with the ragtag team that would meet often at Vincent\u2019s Ear, a little coffee shop in downtown Asheville.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was wonderful,\u201d she recalls. \u201cYou could get a cup of coffee for 75 cents, sit for four hours, and they wouldn\u2019t kick you out.\u201d Other times the group would play chess or backgammon on concrete picnic tables at a nearby rundown courtyard or they\u2019d hike the Blue Ridge Parkway and go berry picking or fishing. \u201cIf you exercise ingenuity,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s pretty easy to find things that don\u2019t cost much that are entertaining.\u201d<\/p>\n On Her Own<\/strong><\/p>\n While the majority of her early years were haphazard, one notion always remained constant \u2014 Booth was rushing to become an adult. Maybe it was lessons from her older sister, who shared the same rebellious streak. Or maybe it was her defiant attitude. Nonetheless, at 16 she made a very grownup decision. As yelling matches with her parents worsened, her bond with peers grew stronger; so she played the ultimate teenage trump card \u2014 emancipation, or legal separation from her parents. \u201cI was already living on my own,\u201d she explains, \u201cbut I couldn\u2019t sign a lease, couldn\u2019t start building credit. So I hired an attorney, and my parents were served with a subpoena.\u201d<\/p>\n Booth was free from parental confines, but before things could get better for the incorrigible teen, they got much worse. What should have been her wonder years were instead her welfare years.<\/p>\n Furthering her quest to be a grownup, at 17 she married her long-time buddy and fellow high-school-dropout, Quinn. \u201cHe made me feel very safe,\u201d she says. \u201cAfter having felt so alone, it meant a lot to me to have someone who would stand by me.\u201d<\/p>\n Three months later, she found out she was pregnant with her son, Kieren. What normally would be a joyful time was instead a stressful one while the new couple struggled in a prison of deep poverty. Living in a tiny relic of an apartment in Asheville, Quinn brought home $800 a month while Booth stayed home to care for their gregarious, rambunctious, hungry infant. Rent gobbled up more than half their income and left little cash to feed and clothe the young family.<\/p>\n \u201cPoverty is like a bubble that closes the realm of possibility around you,\u201d she explains. \u201cAnd there is simply no way out.\u201d<\/p>\n Fortunately, the young couple qualified for a supplemental nutrition program which provided a stockpile of food each month. This meant four gallons of milk, three pounds of black beans and rice, several giant blocks of cheese, 10 pounds of potatoes \u2014 yet it all had to last 30 days. \u201cThree meals a day was not something we could afford,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe usually only had breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays.\u201d<\/p>\n The miserable situation began to take its toll, and after just two and a half years of marriage, Quinn was ready to call it quits. However, they certainly couldn\u2019t afford to file for divorce. Quinn instead enlisted in the military, left the country and withdrew financial support.<\/p>\n Flood Gates Open<\/strong><\/p>\n Booth\u2019s trickle of problems was now a full-fledged flood. Confronted with the realization that she was a stay-at-home mom with no professional skills, she knew that keeping her head above water would be a struggle. And while she attempted to find work, another major problem had crept into the picture \u2013 she was homeless.<\/p>\n \u201cThings were fundamentally not working where I was,\u201d she says. \u201cThe only thing you really can do if you don\u2019t know what other variables to change is just to change everything. Try to eliminate every variable that could possibly be posing a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The escape artist in her prevailed again. With her new boyfriend, Carl, and her most precious cargo, Kieren, in tow, Booth fled to Boulder, CO, one of the few places from her childhood \u2014 with its mix of dreadlocked college folk, eclectic coffee shops, a greenbelt of trails and open spaces and the ever-present Rocky Mountain backdrop \u2014 that brought back happy memories.<\/p>\n But it was a city that didn\u2019t come cheap. Bad credit made it nearly impossible to rent an apartment, and Booth, without a car, couldn\u2019t find a job nearby. To make matters worse, childcare was four times more expensive in Boulder than in Asheville.<\/p>\n And so, she made a decision no parent should have to make: She gave her son away. Kieren was shuffled over to his paternal grandparents\u2019 house for seven months while Lalita and Carl attempted to get back on their feet. \u201cI slept with his T-shirt every night,\u201d she said. “I just couldn’t give up on being somebody who would make him proud.”<\/p>\n Time away from her 2-year-old was devastating, however, being in Colorado proved to be fruitful for the 21-year-old, starting with an interesting job opportunity as an enrolled agent, an expert in U.S. taxation who can represent taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service. She could acquire the license without further schooling. Better yet, it would boost her income to $32,000. She buckled down and read all 4,000 pages of the study guide and, thanks to her near-photographic memory, she aced the test. Another key to climbing out of poverty: She set up a complimentary session with a financial planner, mapping out exactly how to make ends meet.<\/p>\n Finally, her life was stable; she was feeling all the early signs of contentment. But, once again, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carl\u2019s brother in Orlando was very ill, and he needed to move to Florida. \u201cIt was a very difficult choice,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I wanted to keep our family together. I cried all the way out of the state of Colorado. In giving that up, I thought, I better make something exceptional of the life I create.\u201d<\/p>\n The Turning Point<\/strong><\/p>\n The young family settled into an apartment in Sanford, and Booth began the job search, hoping to be an enrolled agent again, but reluctantly taking a minimum-wage job at Winn-Dixie when that didn\u2019t pan out. Then came the ugly realization that if Carl left her, she would be right back where she started when Quinn retreated. \u201cI would be sleeping in my car and surfing from couch to couch again,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The only way to ensure her independence was to do something that frightened her to the very core \u2014 go back to school. At 23, Booth had taken a hiatus from academia for seven years. The gaping holes in her education \u2014 she missed fifth grade altogether and dropped out of high school at 16 \u2014 were not something she could escape.<\/p>\n But Kieren, then 4 years old, served as her constant inspiration. \u201cThe old adage that your child will do as you do, not as you say, is very true,\u201d she says. \u201cIf this were him in this situation, what would I want him to do?\u201d<\/p>\n She knew the answer. And soon after, she enrolled at Seminole Community College. Finally, she was in the right place at the right time. \u201cIt was opportunity,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was the chance to be something different.\u201d She giggles when she says most people probably thought she was incredibly bizarre; she was so thrilled to be reuniting with academia, she would sit in the library and smell the books.<\/p>\n And she thrived. Where high school classes never met her craving for intellectual stimuli, college classes embraced her like an old acquaintance. College was her new haven, cozy and controlled.<\/p>\n In May 2005, Booth was selected to attend the Salzburg Global Seminar, where she brainstormed ways to solve global problems with a group of international students. That trip to Austria proved to be a life-changing one. \u201cWe were coming from Munich, taking the train,\u201d she remembers wistfully. \u201cIt was surreal. For so many years it was, \u2018How am I going to scrounge up enough for Ramen noodles?\u2019 It was such a far cry from that desperate poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n The thought-provoking trip led her to her mission: help others escape the chokehold of poverty. Although she didn\u2019t know how or when, Booth knew she would dedicate her life to this quest. \u201cThat drive to make a difference,\u201d she says, \u201chas been what I\u2019ve eaten, slept and breathed for the past three years.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in the states, Booth\u2019s world became even more dream-like when she won the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship, one of the largest and most competitive scholarships available to undergraduates in America, which whisked away $30,000 worth of bills, books and tuition each year. Now, she could focus purely on studies, devoting her time to the Phi Theta Kappa international scholastic honors society, Brain Bowl, the debate team and literary writing.<\/p>\n Things were looking up. In the meantime, ideas were percolating for her \u201clife mission.\u201d<\/p>\n Daring to Dream<\/strong><\/p>\n These days, Booth\u2019s growing academic momentum sees no bounds. With 135 credit hours to her name and a 4.0 GPA to boot, she couldn\u2019t be more pleased. As a junior at UCF \u2014 double majoring in finance<\/a> and accounting<\/a> \u2014 she\u2019s continuing to make up for lost time.<\/p>\n So far so good. In March, she became the only UCF student ever to capture the elusive Harry S. Truman Scholarship, one of the nation’s most prestigious public policy awards, which provide recipients $30,000 toward graduate studies. Not surprisingly, she also is a member of the UCF Order of Pegasus<\/a>, the highest honor that the university bestows upon students.<\/p>\n To top it off, she founded Lighthouse for Dreams, a financial literacy program aimed at educating and empowering high school students. “I have lived the reality that I’m trying to change for so many people,” she says. “Because I’ve been in those situations, I have a window of insight into what causes the problem and how to go about fixing it.”<\/p>\n Beyond her high school outreach program, Booth has interned with state and U.S. lawmakers to improve Florida’s financial literacy laws and reform welfare’s work restrictions \u2014 two major policy concerns she knows about first hand. She teaches financial literacy to Junior Achievement students, and her thesis is being reviewed by President Bush\u2019s Literacy Task Force and will likely be published in the near future.<\/p>\n