Once homeless, NCO gets rare shot to attend law school under Army program
By Joseph Lacdan, Army News ServiceMarch 1, 2021
Perla Gonzalez, shown here during her college graduation from the University of California-Santa Barbara in 2006, is one of the first three NCOs to be accepted into the Army's Funded Legal Education Program, or FLEP. The program selects active-duty Soldiers to attend law school full time and tuition free but must fulfill a service commitment to serve as an Army lawyer. The program was recently opened to noncommissioned officers in the ranks of sergeant through sergeant first class to apply.
FORT MEADE, Md. -- Each night Perla Gonzalez lay in hushed silence as she slept on a public restroom floor. She huddled against her backpack that contained only a single change of clothes and her textbooks.
Then a senior studying law and society at the University of California-Santa Barbara, she no longer had her close-knit family nearby, who had to suddenly move an hour away to Santa Maria, California, following a domestic dispute. Gonzalez had lived with her parents while attending classes and had to choose between moving or finishing her degree at the same institution.
Tired and hungry, she often hid in fear, worried that a janitor or another student might discover her.
https://www.army.mil/article/243136/once_homeless_nco_gets_rare_shot_to_attend_law_school_under_army_program
