‘Paying it forward' BSU graduate says foster care system prepared her to want to give back to others

BEMIDJI -- In 2007, in a trailer court south of the Twin Cities, Ayla Koob’s family was pulled apart.

Koob was in high school, living with three younger siblings and the man she considers her father. Then a sheriff appeared in the trailer court parking lot. He was with Koob’s social worker. Koob, her two brothers and her sister were being sent off to different homes. Their father had violated the terms of his emergency foster care.

Koob convinced authorities to let her spend the night with the younger of her brothers, then an infant.

“But from that point on,” she said, “we all lived separately.”

Today, Koob is able to look back, but she still grapples with the problems so often found in broken, dysfunctional homes. Domestic abuse, mental illness, chemical dependency and suicide -- all have been areas of her focus in the past few years. Koob, now 23, works in Bemidji as a regional coordinator at TXT4Life, a texting service that connects trained counselors with people contemplating suicide.

“It’s my way of paying it forward,” she said.

Paying it forward, because Koob says a support system emerged as she grew older.

Through adolescence, she ricocheted among various foster homes and out-of-home placements in southeast Minnesota. Families were always willing to take her in.

Having little contact with her parents -- Koob and her siblings have four different biological fathers -- she adopted her sister’s father as a paternal figure.

And in high school, Koob met the woman she calls her “lifesaver,” a Goodhue County social worker with whom she remains close.

“I had all these people put so much unconditional love into me,” Koob said. “I don’t think I would be where I am without them.”

Dayle Charnecki, social worker for Goodhue County Health and Human Services, handled Koob’s case from the time she was 16 to 21.

“She’s always had that spark,” said Charnecki, who talks with Koob every few months. “She has so much ambition, and I’m proud of her, but I can’t take any of the responsibility. That’s just her.”

When Koob started school at BSU in 2009, Charnecki helped with her application for financial aid. She helped with Koob’s taxes. Each year, she registered Koob with the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which runs a voucher program working to reduce college expenses for former foster youth.

Koob used the vouchers -- totaling roughly $3,000 each year -- to cover tuition, housing, food, books and a new computer.

“Things that aren’t always included in your financial aid package,” Charnecki said -- and expenses, she added, that any self-reliant student might struggle to pay.

“She definitely guided me in that time when most kids don’t know what to do,” Koob said of Charnecki. “When most kids feel completely at a loss.”

Somehow, Koob says, she graduated in four years. She majored in social work and psychology, and minored in chemical dependency counseling. Each semester, she took at least 18 credits, adding extra courses during the summer sessions.

Next year, Koob hopes to enroll at the University of Minnesota, where she plans to earn a dual master’s degree in social work and public policy.

But to Koob, the title of “success story” is an uncomfortable one.

“So many times, people without even realizing it look down on kids that go through experiences like mine,” she said. “We just want to be people. I don’t want to be tinted by my childhood.”

That childhood brought Koob to a dozen different schools before her high school graduation. Between her two official stints in foster care -- from July 1992 to June 1993, and from June 2007 to May 2009 -- she often was in out-of-home placements, her parents unfit to raise children.

“Still,” she said, “I had a family growing up. We did things together. My family was super dysfunctional -- to this day it still is. But that doesn’t make my family any less of a family than anyone else’s.”

Koob has been reminiscing a lot lately. She was asked by Evergreen Youth and Family Services in Bemidji to deliver a speech about her life at the program’s next conference. It’s a chance, Koob said, to focus not on herself, but on the youth still in the foster care system.

So, Koob recently called her 16-year-old sister to revisit their separation, their shared hardships.

“It’s weird to put your life into a presentation,” Koob said. “I’m still making sure it’s not about me, even though it’s my story.”