A Texas youngster born in jail defied all expectations by graduating from high school at the top of her class and enrolling at Harvard University in the autumn.
Aurora Sky Castner graduated third in her class from Conroe High School on Thursday night, 18 years after her birth in the Galveston County Jail, according to the Houston Chronicle.
“I was born in prison,” is how the new grad opened her application essay to the Ivy League school before she was accepted through early action, according to the newspaper.
Castner’s mother was jailed at the time of her birth and had not been a part of her life since the day her father picked her up from the jail as a newborn and raised her as a single parent.
Castner was able to achieve her aspiration of attending Harvard and pursuing a career in law with the assistance of the Conroe community.
Her primary school staff introduced her to a community mentoring program in which adult volunteers meet with young pupils at least once a week for lunch and counsel them on their needs, aspirations, concerns, and future. Many mentor-student relationships last for years, and Castner’s was no exception.
According to the Chronicle, Mona Hamby has been a part of Castner’s life for a decade.
“I was given a paper about her. Her hero was Rosa Parks, her favorite food was tacos from Dairy Queen and she loved to read. I thought this sounds like a bright little girl,” Hamby told the newspaper. “I still have that paper today.”
Like Castner, Hamby did not have a mother in her life.
“She told me ‘I’ve been to jail.’ I said “No, that can’t be right,’” she said of the then 8-year-old. “I knew that I can’t just go eat lunch with this kid once a week, she needed more.”
Hamby took Castner to her first haircut at a salon, helped her get glasses and even took her to tour Harvard’s campus in March 2022, the publication reported.
“After that trip, I saw her love for the school intensify,” Hamby said.
The teenager said she found value in her life both before she joined the mentorship program and after.
“It was a very different environment than I grew up in and that’s not a bad thing,” Castner told the Chronicle. “Everything that Mona taught me was very valuable in the same way that everything that I went through before Mona was very valuable.”
Others in the community looked out for the teen as well — from helping her get dental care to gifting her the experience of summer camp. A Boston University professor, James Wallace, even advised Castner on her Harvard application, according to the paper.
“He helped me to tell my story in the best way possible,” she said.
But Castner’s academic rigor was self-motivated. She grew up a strong reader at an early age and joined her high school’s Academy for Health and Science Professions, which helps prepare young minds for careers in science and mathematics.
