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Karina Melendez, 17, junior at Bronx High School for Law and Finance

This is the second in a series of profiles of college-bound student recipients of scholarships administered by New Visions for Public Schools.

Last month, the principal of the Bronx School of Law and Finance, Evan Schwartz, called junior Karina Melendez to his office, but he didn’t tell her why.

Schwartz had a happy surprise, something that Melendez had long stopped expecting. She had survived bone cancer, homelessness, and foster care all before the age of eighteen, and so had trained herself to anticipate the worst.

“There was this fear and angst in her face” as she walked into Schwartz’s office, recalled Eva Lopez, a lawyer and Melendez’s mentor, who had been invited to the school for the reveal.

But when Melendez saw Schwartz, Lopez, her foster mother, and others who had gathered to celebrate her, with flowers waiting on the table, she was confused.  “Well, I know they didn’t get me that as a sorry gift,” she later remembered thinking. “What’s going on?”

As the news sunk in that she had won a full ride to the college of her choice, Melendez also realized that after years of misfortune, things were turning her way. “This changes everything,” she told the gathered crowd.

Listen to Melendez discuss how she overcame cancer and homelessness to land at the top of her class.

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