home is the only real bedroom karla has ever known. >> my mom, she started having mental problems, and that's whether everything just went bad. >> from the age of ten, she says, she and her mother lived in homeless shelters in orange county. >> i pretty much didn't get to be a kid. >> karla fell behind on her education too. at 16, when the state found out she wasn't in school, she was taken away from her mother and placed in foster care. >> reporter: has it been a good experience or bad experience? >> well, for me, it has been good. i have, you could say, a family. >> reporter: now just as karla says she is finally feeling like she is part of a family. >> the whole number is difficult visible by three. >> reporter: and beginning to catch up in school and making