When Angelica Gonzalez left home at age 11, all she wanted was a safe place where she could go back to school.

Abandoned by her mentally ill mother, she was raising herself on the streets of her Phoenix neighborhood, never in school, and narrowly avoiding the gangs and crime that seemed to be everywhere.

“I just knew if I stayed there, something really bad was going to happen. You never knew when your luck would finally run out,” Gonzalez said.

By the time Gonzalez turned 26, she was far from those streets, with a degree from the University of Washington Tacoma and a decent apartment outside Seattle. A public child care subsidy held her new life together. The subsidy allowed her to afford one of the region’s best child care centers for her toddler and keep a promising job at a local elementary school. While it paid only roughly $20,000 a year, the job offered a bright future.

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