RICHMOND — Elexis Webster was just 14 years old when she landed in foster care, after being discovered by police living in a car somewhere near Hayward.

She spent years homeless and impoverished and missed three grades. But this week, Elexis’ resilience and determination was on full display as she graduated third in her class with a 4.6 GPA from Kennedy High School in Richmond. She will attend UC San Diego in the fall.

It hardly seemed possible a few years ago. Elexis and her younger sister, Elyssa, often would search out places to sleep at night, sometimes in motel rooms, but also wherever they could find a spot — behind the Target store in Livermore, inside the baseball dugout in Hayward, or on park benches.

Unable to rely on parents for support, the two sisters were forced to be “little watchmen over each other,” said Millard Clay, her foster-mother who has taken care of Webster for nearly six years. She still recalls that when Elexis came into her foster home, “she was very, very sick” and “very nervous.”

“She was just shaking like a leaf on the tree. Anything would have her jumping,” Clay recalled.

Elexis, 19, didn’t go to school for three years from fifth through seventh grades, as she was often living on the streets.

“With Elexis’ incredible story, you’d never know if she didn’t tell you,” said Laura Shebroe, her Advanced Placement calculus teacher. “She’s very motivated to learn, and she’s not easily discouraged. But she is so willing to keep trying, even when she gets stuck on something.”

“I’ve never seen her in a bad mood,” Shebroe said. “And she is always smiling. She really has a genuine desire to be the best version of herself at all times.”

“She’s got a very playful sense of humor without being childish or immature,” added Ian Bader, her AP English teacher. “Elexis has this kind of radiance that doesn’t ever seem to diminish. It’s like she’s living every day like it’s her last, so there’s just a general feeling of warmth and joy that just comes off of her at all times … and an attitude of ‘why be negative?'”

But if you ask her about those days on the street, she’ll tell you: “Life was a nightmare.” She said she suffered from emotional and physical abuse at the hands of family members.

“It was terrible,” she said. “It was like a night terror. Only you wake up and you are stuck with it. …”

It took awhile for her to open up and trust her new home and situation, Elexis said. She was all too familiar with the expectation that whenever something good would happen, something or someone would mess that up.

When the chance came to return to school, she was determined to make the most of the opportunity.

“Most kids don’t like to learn, but I wanted to do it and missed it,” she said, explaining how she loved watching documentaries and reading, even though she was unable to do much of it when she was homeless.

But it was really her foster mom, Clay, whom she calls her “Mema,” who transformed her life, instilling in her a faith in God and herself.

“You don’t need to let your past dictate your future,” Clay would tell her.

She dreams of being a pharmaceutical chemist, focused on developing affordable drug cures for those struggling with immunological deficiencies, like herself.

Her foster mom had so much faith in her that she enrolled Elexis in the eighth grade, skipping over the three grades she missed, confident that she’d be able to make it up.

“I was so freaked out,” Elexis said of starting in eighth grade. “But she told me, ‘Run your teacher down if you don’t understand something. Don’t just sit there and say I don’t understand. Knock on that teacher’s door during lunch time or after school.’ And that’s what I did.”

She’d even show up for school on Saturdays, not because she was in trouble or had to make up work like many kids, but simply because it was a chance to ask her teachers more questions.

And she hopes more kids like her will get the second chance in life that she did.

“If it wasn’t for Mema, I wouldn’t be doing so good,” she said.

“Just having someone in the corner and someone who is for you and with you all the way, when you go on this journey, is the most important thing you need, so you don’t feel you are doing it on your own, ” she said.