MIDLAND, Texas - After nearly two decades, Midlander Heather Hembree, a single mother of three, still hears the voices of her sixth-grade teachers who said she would never amount to anything. After years of struggling, she is a new college graduate with potential and the future ahead of her.

“There has just been this sort of rebellious energy that has driven me to do everything that they said I couldn’t,” Hembree said. “I really just want to send them graduation photos and show them that they were wrong, that I did it.”

Hembree, a resident of the Buckner Family Place program for almost two years, graduated from University of Texas of the Permian Basin on Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in sociology.

Through it all -- living in the foster system, learning to care for her autistic son and divorce -- Hembree said that it has been her persistence that has given her the strength to continue.

“A girl on a mission can get things done,” Hembree said. “I can get things done in a crisis, that’s probably due to my rocky childhood. You learn to be resilient and persistent and to be a fighter who, against all odds, makes things happen.”

Read more of the Midland Reporter-Telegram story here: Resilient Midland mom overcomes the odds