Raising My 5 Siblings Myself

After Her Parents Died Of Cancer Almost 3 Years Apart, 20-year-old Samantha Rodriguez Vowed To Keep Her Family Together No Matter What

- Caitlin Keating

Rushing into their Orlando home, the Rodriguez children drop their backpacks, run to the refrigerator for a snack and settle into their usual after-school chaos. Destiny, 7, and Bella, 9, giggle as they sit down at the computer to finish up their homework so they can fit in playtime before dinner. Michael, 12, cranks up the radio as he sets the dining room table, and Brenda, 14, turns on the TV to watch The Vampire Diaries while Milagros, 16, and Samantha, 20, head into the kitchen to start making dinner. “Things are always a little crazy around here,” says Samantha with a laugh. “There isn’t a manual of how to handle everything. We’re learning as we go.”

Already the six siblings have learned more than anyone their ages should have to. In June 2013 their mother, Lisa Smith, died of cervical cancer at the age of 35. Three years later their father, Alexander Rodriguez, 44, died from lymphoma, and the children—then ages 4 to 17—were left wondering what would happen to them. “There was no one in our family who could take all of us in,” says Samantha. And that was when Samantha herself, then 17, stepped up. “I decided that I had to do everything I possibly could to help these kids,” she says. “There was no way that I was going to let us be split up.”