Anyone who's ever been to a wedding knows not everybody can stand up in front of a roomful of people and just talk. Anthony Pico discovered by accident, at 15, that he has a gift for doing that. He's 18 now, and he's become so well known as a public speaker on the subject of foster care, which he knows well, he was appointed to a blue ribbon commission aiming to reform the largest foster care system in the country, the one in California, Anthony's home state. In addition, Anthony still speaks to judges and legislators all over the state, and the country, sometimes every week. But it's gotten complicated...

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Related Legislation

There's a new bill in Congress that would make 21 the new 18 for kids in foster care, give them a few extra years of housing and support if they need it. A small number of states, and isolated counties, have tried this on their own. They've found that, while foster care is a deeply flawed system, if kids are still in the system at 18, a few extra years seems to get more of them out of their sticky teenage years and into stable adult lives. Read more about the bill here: http://boxer.senate.gov/news/releases/record.cfm?id=275098