A young adult female with long brown hair, wearing a green V-neck T-shirt indoors. A shelf holds silver urns, a lit candle, framed photograph, and bouquet of red roses in a home setting. 10:28
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The big sister who became mom to five

The balloons are going the wrong way. "Guys, we need to blow the balloons, not deflate them," Samantha Rodriguez says, and soon the birthday song starts. more

Samantha is 21, and "the kids," as she calls them, are her five younger siblings. She has raised them since cancer took both of their parents. Destiny, now in second grade, wasn't even one when their mother died. Samantha doubts she remembers her at all, and that's very hard to accept. She wants Destiny to know how much their mother loved them, and to feel it.

Their mother, Lisa, died of cervical cancer about nine months after she was diagnosed. "She was like the rock in our family," Samantha says. Their father, Alex, took good care of them while he grieved, until he was diagnosed with cancer too, when Samantha was 17, and died about a month later. She had been mothering the kids since their mother died, and now she had to "play both roles."

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The balloons are going the wrong way.

Some days come with orders. "Fold your clothes and put them away, because we're going to be busy all day today." When one of the kids asks about the park, she's game. "I don't think it's too cold outside."

Around the time she turned 18, Samantha was out of school herself and telling the kids how much school mattered. Then it hit her. "If you're telling them to do it, you need to do it." She went back and graduated as the oldest one in her class, a little embarrassing, she admits, but proof that you can mess up, keep going and end up in a better place.

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Telling the kids to stay in school sent Samantha back to finish her own diploma.

Now she works part-time and goes to school part-time, "and I take care of the kids full-time." Her day starts at 6, when the two teenage girls catch the bus to high school and she makes breakfast for the three youngest before dropping them at their school a block away. Chores, groceries, errands and her own homework all happen while they're in class, and she works three mornings a week.

There are reminders, too. "Come on, let's make the bed before you play," she says. "Get off there with your shoes." Her social life is small, partly by choice, because she would much rather spend her weekends with the kids.

One of her siblings says Samantha is "giving up her life to take care of us." The kids can go to her for advice, they say, as a sister and as a parent. Samantha isn't sure how she finds the balance. "I think I just know in my heart when it's time to be mom or when it's time to be sister."

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Samantha says she just knows when the kids need a sister and when they need a mom.

Michael, or Mikey, is the only boy, and she knows he needs his own space to be one. She tries to do boy things with him, and it doesn't always work out. When she can't, her boyfriend steps in and takes him, something she says she appreciates a lot.

Their home, in Samantha's words, is "a mix of chaos and love." Six of them share one bathroom, while Grandma gets her own "cuz she's old." Their parents' urns and photos sit out where everyone can see them, and the family comes there to pray and talk to them. One of them still remembers what their mother taught in the kitchen: never follow the directions on the box.