The first time Sylvia Hoover saw her dream of a nursing career vaporize, she was 22. That’s when both of her parents died within months of each other after difficult illnesses, scrambling her college plans.

Life just kept on coming at the now-44-year-old mother of five.

A hard childhood with struggling parents in Kansas City’s Northeast neighborhood was followed by many years as a single parent, working her way into bookkeeping jobs to keep her family afloat.

“Seeing that light at the end of the tunnel is not always as easy as it could be,” she said.

In the present moment, her youngest child, 2-year-old Leo, squirmed in a booth next to Hoover in a coffee shop a minute away from North Kansas City Hospital where Hoover is indeed a nurse. She’s fully on the other side of that tunnel, and she’s looking back at what she endured to get here —especially the help she got at the end from LINC’s Missouri Work Assistance program — with bountiful gratitude.

“When you think of the stress in getting to this point,” she said, “you appreciate it more.”

Her heart for nursing rose from hardship. Her mother was battling alcoholism. Her father, a war veteran with complications from diabetes and Agent Orange toxins, was often in the Veterans Administration hospital.

She remembers elementary school years when she often found herself taking care of her little sister and brother.

“I remember standing on a bucket at the stove to cook hotdogs,” she said.

Playing in the house or out in the neighborhood with her siblings and friends, she said, if someone got hurt “I was always the first to get the Band-Aids.”

She just knew she was going to be a nurse, and a good one. Her conviction, however, suffered blow after blow. She had made it through two years at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley when the struggle of managing her parents’ illnesses, and the impact of their deaths, overwhelmed her.

She had four children between the age of 20 and 34 which she raised as a single parent. But all along the way she worked, never seeking public assistance. Eventually she was working in human resources and payroll for a Kansas City non-profit.

She hadn’t forgotten her dream of nursing, which she realized the day in 2022 she accompanied her second-eldest daughter to a high school career fair. Her daughter was at a table talking with a representative who was encouraging her to apply for the Kauffman Foundation’s KC Scholars program when the rep said to Hoover, “You know we have adult learning scholarships, too.”

In rapid succession Hoover had a partial scholarship, was enrolled and starting classes in Park University’s nursing school, had an arrangement to keep her working at her non-profit job while in school, and even was lining up an opportunity to begin a tech job working evenings at NKC Hospital.

But life wasn’t done surprising Hoover. Just as rapidly, it all seemed to come undone.

Her non-profit employer told her it had to close out her job. And then Hoover found out that she and her boyfriend were unexpectedly expecting. With a child coming, there would be no way, she decided, that she could keep up with nursing school and the required clinical work and take on the night work at NKC Hospital. Facing unemployment and debt while still wanting somehow to stay in school, Hoover took advice from a friend and did something she hadn’t done before: She applied for public assistance.

And with that came a letter from the state telling her to contact Aaron Bond at LINC.

Hoover had some idea what that was about. She knew that her successful application for food stamps would come with requirements from the Missouri Department of Education that she seek work or education, and that LINC’s Work Assistance Program would be her monitor, checking in on her, “probably making me log my hours” spent job searching or schooling, she said.

“I found out it was much more than that.”

One thing about Hoover was obvious from the moment he met her, said Bond, the associate director of LINC’s MWA program.

“She was serious about what she was doing,” he said.

As an A student, she was already strong in MWA’s schooling requirement, he said. She needed help bridging what to her now looked like a mighty abyss between school and the nursing career she wanted so badly.

LINC was able to help in many ways, including reimbursing her for the cost of gas in driving to school and her work sites.

Her car was failing. Its brakes were going out. But Bond connected her with a repair shop that was convenient, reliable and fair-priced, and LINC helped cover those costs.

Hoover also had some unpaid utility bills. LINC helped cover those.

And all along the way, Bond said, he also worked with her on budgeting, figuring out strategies that would help Hoover be able to take on these costs in the future on her own.

“When the opportunity came (to chase her nursing dream),” Hoover said, “I was ready to do whatever I had to do this time. LINC was a huge blessing.”

Finally, as she was graduating in December 2024, Hoover went into January 2025 with one major hurdle left: paying for the costs of her nursing licensing exam.

“That was the payment (by LINC) I was most proud of,” Bond said, “because I knew she had made it.”

LINC’s workforce development team each year helps some 400 people who are receiving temporary assistance from the state gain job skills and overcome barriers to find sustainable jobs and careers that can support them as they raise their children — parents like Hoover, and children like Leo.

Hoover loves her job. It now sustains her and her family. The hospital even has a childcare center, so she simply takes Leo with her to work.

The connections Hoover makes moment to moment with patients reward her most for the journey that finally got her into nursing.

“It’s the little things,” she said. “I can help them with their dressings and their medications, but when you just take five minutes to talk . . . it’s the simple things they appreciate the most.”

“It makes my heart happy.”