Despite the fact she didn’t attend school regularly until the middle of sixth grade, Snodgrass just graduated from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in social science. Now she’s headed to Harvard University in the fall to get her master’s degree in education, where she’ll do research on how to help foster kids like herself get college degrees.
La Belle Armoire, a second-hand clothing boutique specializing in designer and couture clothes, is donating a new wardrobe to Snodgrass when she goes off to school this fall.
“She needs warmer clothes when she goes to the East Coast, and she also needs things that will make her feel good about herself,” La Belle Armoire co-owner Dolly Henderson said. “We’re enjoying doing this for her a great deal.”
Used to wearing jeans and sandals, Snodgrass said she is thrilled about her new La Belle Armoire wardrobe, which includes a few sophisticated dresses and blazers, as well as more casual pieces.
“I thought I was ready to go to Harvard, but this is the part I forgot about,” she said.
A methamphetamine user, Snodgrass’ birth mother would leave her and her brothers and sisters to fend for themselves for days at a time when she was a child, she said. Snodgrass took care of her younger siblings and scrounged for food to feed the family when her mother wasn’t home.
Now a Harvard-bound graduate student who has already published two books on foster children, Snodgrass and her brothers and sisters were in and out of foster care 10 different times as children. She and her siblings were placed at Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange when she was 11, and she was eventually adopted and earned good grades in high school and college.
