Steven Vaughn-Lewis is tall and lanky and sometimes stammers. But any first impressions of awkwardness vanish as he exudes a quiet confidence, often punctuated by a warm grin.

It is a confidence that has grown over his 18 years, as he overcame homelessness, months of missing grade school, and stints in foster care.

After his grandmother rescued him at age 8, he grew up in a Strawberry Mansion neighborhood where poverty runs deep, few have better than a high school diploma, and gunshots turn young black men like him into casualties of petty violence.

Now, with high school over, Steven nervously awaits his next hurdle.

With a full four-year academic scholarship, he's heading to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school where African American students are twice as likely as white students to drop out.

It is his first stop in becoming a surgeon.

As he prepares for the arduous journey, Steven is humbled by thoughts of what if?

"There are a lot of people like me who just weren't that fortunate," he says. "What if my grandma hadn't taken me out of foster care? What if I wasn't fortunate enough to have gone to Masterman? I don't know where I'd be now."

Steven doesn't like to linger on his childhood. What he will say is that he and his brother were often hostage to his mother's mental illness, which sometimes turned emotionally abusive. The family moved abruptly and often - from Los Angeles; to Miami, Ohio; to Texas, to Philadelphia.

"I looked at them like adventures," he says of the long bus rides to nowhere. Before landing with his grandmother, he went to eight schools. In every one he'd make a best friend, only to leave each behind.

The last time Steven remembers seeing his father, he was about 10. They were in court over what he believes was a custody dispute.

His mother appeared in fits and starts.

Reading, he says, became his refuge.

When Steven was about 3, his grandmother remembers her daughter calling to say he was reading the newspaper comics.

"He always could read," says his grandmother, Loretta Ford. "I don't remember a time when he couldn't read."

And he had a thirsty mind, asking so many questions.

In raising Steven, the 64-year-old former nurse relied on her old-school values - values she learned growing up in a family that didn't have much, but at a time when "children were cared for."

"It's called 'everyday living,' " she explains. "You do what you can."

For her grandsons, that meant no "bed hugging." They were up and dressed by 8 a.m., even in summer.

Rooms had to be clean. Homework had to be done.