These Homeless Triplets Overcame Incredible Odds – See What Brought Them Tears of Joy

The Yeckes triplets have a lot to celebrate these days after defying some incredible odds. They lost both of their parents, became homeless, and were kept out of school until they were eight years old. Now, they're high school graduates.

Haley, Kassidy, and Sierra will soon be on their way to college. But it was an extra blessing from Las Vegas, Nevada's FOX 5 news team that brought the girls to tears at their recent graduation day.  

The sisters' oppressive circumstances were so extreme that their story sounds like a movie. 

"After we were born, our mother died, and then our dad went to prison...and we lived with our grandmother for a while," Sierra Yeckes told  KVVU-TV. 

"She [their grandmother] did not believe in schooling, so we weren't put into school until we were eight," Kassidy said. 

The triplets later moved with their dad from Pioche to Las Vegas, Nevada but he would leave them alone for weeks at a time. 

"He started to leave us for weeks, months at a time," Haley said. "We were left to kind of take care of ourselves."

After a drive-by shooting put bullets in their home, the triplets moved back in with their grandparents. 

They were finally put in school, but the hardship didn't end there.

"We weren't given food or clothing," one of the triplets said.

These circumstances put Haley, Kassidy, and Sierra way behind their classmates. They could neither read nor write and often displayed disruptive behavior toward teachers, counselors, and authority figures.

The situation seemed hopeless for the three girls until the GEAR UP Program stepped in to help.

Over time, they were able to raise and maintain a 3.0 GPA while taking advanced courses and working.

"If you asked me like maybe at the start of my freshman year, I wouldn't have said I had any doors at all, but with people's help there's opportunities now that I would have never imagined before," Kassidy said. 

Now all three girls are headed off to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, but they're not going empty-handed.  

Albertson's grocery store teamed up with the FOX 5 Surprise Squad and gave them $5,000 each toward college expenses. 

The three sisters are also proud owners of 2017 Nissans thanks to a local Nissan dealer. 

Even though the girls do not have their driver's licenses yet, a local credit union is paying for a year's worth of free gas and their car registrations.

With the help from the community, the girls believe the sky is the limit and they have a brighter future. 

"I wasn't sure that I would make it this far, but now that I have, I'm like, 'Let's do it'," Haley said.