At the age of 6, Elizabeth Adkins, now a graduating senior at Bonny Eagle High School, moved with her siblings from Stockton, Calif., to Standish to live with her aunt.

Adkins’ 43-year-old single mother, Noreen Long, had just died of a drug overdose. Adkins, who was both illiterate and malnourished, enrolled at the Steep Falls School, in the second-grade class of Christy Sayre.

When Adkins’ aunt attempted to send her to a different relative in Pennsylvania, Adkins talked to Sayre. Now a third-grade teacher at Steep Falls School, Sayre said she knew something was wrong when Adkins approached her, looking “completely deflated.”

“She came into my classroom and asked me for my address and my phone number, so I started to ask questions,” Sayre recalled. “She told me she was moving to Pennsylvania. You could kind of tell on her face, that was not something that was exciting her.”

Sayre and her husband, Tom, who live in Limington, decided to intervene in the matter, eventually becoming Adkins’ permanent legal guardians.

“I couldn’t have had a better family pick me, I guess,” said Adkins, 17. “It went uphill immediately. I gained weight. They helped me every night at the dinner table. We spent hours and hours on academics. I’m now on the honor roll. It’s like I was born to be a Sayre.”

On Friday, Adkins will be among the 246 members of the Bonny Eagle class of 2015 who will graduate in ceremonies that start at 7 p.m., in the Cross Insurance Arena, Portland.

In the fall, she will enroll at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., to study hospitality and tourism management.

“If Christy and Tom had never taken me in, I probably would not be graduating even high school, let alone going to college,” she said. “I am going to be the first one in my family ­– my biological family – to be going to college, and it’s just the most incredible feeling.”

On Tuesday, Adkins, an avid student, community volunteer, and soccer and tennis player, reflected on her life story. Recently, Adkins said, she has researched her birthplace of Stockton, which has attracted national attention since the 2008 financial crash due to the city’s massive foreclosure crisis, high unemployment rates and 2012 municipal bankruptcy.

“I looked up Stockton the other day and wrote a story about it for one of my classes,” Adkins said. “Just the crime rates, the statistics, I probably wouldn’t have made it past the age of 25, whether it be dying from a drug overdose myself or just, there are shootings all the time. The odds of me being a part of that could have been so high. The chance of me making it out of there alive would be very, very little.”

After entering the Bonny Eagle school system, Adkins said, it took her about half a decade to hit her stride academically.

“That was, I guess, the rebuilding years,” she said. “The first seven years of my life I had never written anything or read anything because no one cared enough to have me doing that. Those were the struggle years of me just figuring out what works for me and getting everything just right.”

That began to change in eighth grade, Adkins said.

“The reading and writing, that came pretty quickly for me, but math that was the hardest thing I have ever had to do,” she said. “I’ve always had trouble with it. I’ve definitely gotten the hang of it now. Actually, once eighth grade hit, that’s kind of when everything just started going up hill really quickly. My grades skyrocketed. It was awesome.”

Adkins gives great credit to the Sayres, who, she says, have provided the kind of persistent support and encouragement she never received as a child.

“They care,” Adkins said. “A lot. They always push me to be who I should be and who they know I can be instead of letting me slack off.”

Bonny Eagle High School Principal Paul Penna said he was struck by Adkins’ humility and maturity.

“You would never know anything about her background having just met her, talking to her, seeing her in the halls, having a relationship with her,” he said. “She just is in a different place than a lot of kids her age. She has high aspirations and goals for herself, she’s very personable, she wants to help others, she cares about other people.”

Sayre said Adkins has worked hard to become what she is today.

“My husband and I are very proud of the young woman that she’s grown up to be,” Sayre said. “I really feel like her determination and hard work has helped her overcome a lot of obstacles.”

Elizabeth Adkins