Yes, I was in the foster care system. My name is David Baldwin and I am a 17-year-old who is close to graduation. I was born in Palmer, Alaska, on February 1st, 2008. In my biological family, I am the middle child of 5. There was domestic violence in my family for as long as I can remember. I recently found out that my dad started doing drugs at the age of 13. I don't know how long my mom did drugs, but I know she did them when my parents were together. There was a big fight between my parents in 2011 that led to my dad being arrested and a no contact order (NCO) between my parents. My mom had found a new boyfriend and we, the kids, had to live in the car. At that point the Alaska DHS got involved and removed us from our mom and we stayed with one of our parents' friends. Since DHS did not remove us from our dad, he worked to get custody of us. I was 7 when my dad decided to move to Iowa with my sisters and I, leaving my mom behind. My brother Dominic was born in Alaska, on November 22nd, 2014. My dad saw pictures of Dominic on social media and realized Dominic was his son and contacted Alaska DHS. My dad brought Dominic to Iowa at 11 months old. My dad gave us minimal supervision because he was often under the influence. Sometimes my dad didn't take me to school and left me at home alone while he was supposedly at work. One of the days I went to school was a long day, and all I wanted to do when I came home was play on my phone and relax. My oldest sister had skipped school that day and was smoking marijuana on the couch when I got home. It wasn't long before my dad got home. There was yelling in her room and from what I could make out from the yelling, my dad was mad at her for smoking his weed. I heard loud bangs from upstairs. I heard my sister scream and I flew up the stairs and as I got to the landing leading to the second flight of stairs, I saw something that a 9 year old should never have to see. My dad was slamming my sister's head into the wall. His hand soared through the air so fast and made contact with my sister's head. That is one reason, along with his drug addiction, why we were removed from him. We all were placed into foster care on June 9th, 2017. Dominic and I were placed with Brett and Rachel Baldwin. My biological parents eventually got their rights terminated. Dominic and I got adopted on August 19, 2019. I am now the oldest of five kids in the Baldwin household, and will be the first to go to college out of my siblings. I plan to work in a mental health or behavioral health hospital as a Registered Nurse, to help kids who suffer from mental health disorders because of their trauma. This scholarship and the money I will earn from work will help alleviate the financial burden that it puts on my shoulders as well as my adoptive parents, who have a total of 5 kids, 3 of them being adopted.

My interest in the medical field began with my sudden near-death experience. On January 10th, 2022 I went to the emergency room because I was having severe abdominal pain, and it hurt for me to walk. I had complained about my pain at school and came home early on Friday, January 7th. The weekend went by and I was still in pain so my mother took me to the walk-in clinic, and I was sent to the ER. After I got an X-ray, they discovered my appendix had ruptured and was leaking puss out onto my bowels which caused them to get inflamed. I needed emergency surgery to remove it. They tried to do it laparoscopically, which means cutting a tiny incision with the aid of a camera, but they weren't able to. They ended up cutting an incision from below my belly button to the top of my pelvic bone. The surgery took 3 hours. I was talking to the doctor after the surgery and he said that we should've come in sooner. If we waited to come in a couple days later, I would be dead. I stayed in the hospital for 4 days but it felt like a week. I have changed my thoughts of where I would like to be in the medical field a few times but have stayed loyal to it for 3 years. I have decided what I want to call my career and that is being a Registered Nurse. From there I can do many things, but I want to work in a mental health or behavioral health hospital.

My name is David Baldwin and I am a 17-year-old close to graduating high school. I attend Crossroads Learning Hub also known as Futures Alternative High School in Boone, Iowa. My interests include arts/crafts, writing poems, playing with my dog, playing tennis, and volunteering. This year, I plan to play tennis through the Boone schools again, hopefully making it onto the varsity team. My plan for after graduation is to attend nursing school at Des Moines Area Community Colleges, located in Boone, Iowa, to get my RN License. With that I will find a job at a mental health hospital and help kids like me who suffer from depression and anxiety. I will also help kids who suffer from addiction, because I have felt the impact of addiction in my life. I first started volunteering at Boone Middle School, while I was attending there. I was a student who loved to help and I expressed that by helping all the lunch ladies prepare and serve food, manage the line that the students went through by marking each student down, and cleaning the lunch room tables, as well as occasional sweeping of the commons. I got to know the lunch ladies really well and they became like family. I think my most moving experience in serving was volunteering at the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry. It is located in Story City, Iowa. Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry is a pantry with donated food and hygiene products from Hy-Vee and Fareway. Our church, Grace Bible Church in Gilbert Iowa, serves there and that is how I started. It was my birthday and my grandparents asked if I would like to help them serve at the food pantry. My answer should have been predicted because they know I love to serve others. When we got there, I was assigned to package the frozen food orders. Before we started, we prayed that all would go well and we would have gracious hearts towards these families. In the first hour we served 18 families. I was told that they don't usually move that fast and they said that it was because we had so much help. There were a total of 7 people helping out that day. At first I was in the back but as time went on and more people came they needed someone to help with loading the cars. We served a total of 27 families that day. If I were to start my own charity, the funding would go towards supporting mental health and behavioral health hospitals by providing for their services, supplies, food and more. I was in and out of mental and behavioral health hospitals for many years and when I was in those placements, I realized they often did not have enough funding for some, if not all those things. This scholarship and the money I earn from work will help alleviate the financial burden that schooling puts on my shoulders as well as my adoptive parents, who have a total of 5 kids, 3 of them being adopted.

Due to the circumstances that I grew up in, it would have been easy to fall down a harsh, unpleasant, and disastrous path. Both my biological parents are drug users and alcoholics. They lost us kids because of it. They have both used drugs to suppress what they were feeling, and by doing so, they taught us children, whether they meant to or not, that using drugs, alcohol and substances is okay or normal. Even though my parents provided shelter and food, my two older sisters had to prepare the food, give my brother and I emotional support, as well as sometimes taking me to the bus stop for school. That taught me that siblings were supposed to take care of each other. For a while I vaped with friends in middle school. Most of the time I didn't know what I was putting into my body, but when you just want to suppress things, you'll take anything. And after trying what my parents did, suppressing their emotions, I soon realized it only made me worse. One time I got really sick after using a friend's vape, but again I wanted to smother my emotions so I didn't care. I have since then put effort into therapy, gone to mental health and behavioral health facilities to learn healthier coping mechanisms, managed my medications with a psychiatrist, and most of all I have stayed clean for a little over 2 years. I want to make a change to show my biological parents that you don't have to rely on drugs. I hope by making this change and breaking the cycle on my end of the generation I will make them proud. I mentioned above going to mental health and behavioral health facilities. I say this because I want to be a registered nurse to help those with poor mental health, those who suffer from addiction, and those who need a second chance. Since I got more than a second chance, I believe that everyone deserves not only a second chance, but multiple chances to get better. I plan to use this scholarship to help pay for schooling and that way I can help others in need. This scholarship and the money I earn from work will help alleviate the financial burden that it puts on my shoulders as well as my adoptive parents, who have a total of 5 kids, 3 of them being adopted.