Lowell — McKenna Tobin is independent: she’s got a new place to live, two dogs, a job and a diploma from Lowell High School.
She’s ready to have a fun summer, and then major in social work at Aquinas College.
“I feel confident,” McKenna said, shortly after finishing her final day of high school and a week before her May 22 graduation. “If you were to ask me in January, I would have said I have no idea where I am going or what I’m going to be. I am back on track.”
McKenna is in a position many people aren’t in until a much older age. She and her older sister by 14 months, Abbygail Tobin, served as caregivers for their father, Rodney VanCamp, for several months before he died at age 84 in November. Their mother, Nancy VanCamp, died at age 72 when McKenna was in fifth grade.
“I was adopted by my great-grandparents, so technically my great-grandparents passed away, but I lived with them since I’ve been in diapers, so they are my parents.”
Having lost her mother (great-grandmother) to liver failure, she better understood what her father’s (great-grandfather’s) cancer diagnosis in February 2024 meant for the months to come.
“I kind of understood the things that were going to happen, the procedures and what it already felt like to lose a parent. For school, it was definitely hard to focus during the first trimester, but after that I knew that just because my dad passed away, my world technically didn’t end.
“I still had to get up every day and go to school every day.”
In the months before he died, McKenna took a proactive step to make sure she could best care for him. She enrolled in the Emergency Medical Technician program at Kent Career Technical Center. She had already completed the Health Career Foundations program there her junior year.
“When my dad got sick, I thought if anything was going to help me, it would be the EMT program,” she said.
She learned to wrap his swollen legs, use proper sanitation, make sure he took his medication and how to help him walk. The girls were by his side as he became more and more ill, until he had to go into the hospital and then into hospice care.
Bills, Food, Work and School
After their father died, McKenna and Abbygail had to think about meeting basic needs, on top of everything else.
“The first month was definitely really hard to focus in school. I had to start worrying about where my food was going to come from and getting to work every day,” McKenna said.
Her days were busy.
“I would get home and my sister or I would go to the store and pick out whatever we could eat that night, like ramen noodles, or something we could make that day that would also be a good meal in a week or two. Pasta was a big one.”
McKenna would go to work at a restaurant from 4 to 10 p.m. every evening, so she made sure she finished her homework at school.
“Not only did we have to worry about food, we also had to worry about the bills, the water being shut off, the lights being shut off.”
She wasn’t entirely unprepared.
“When my dad got the diagnosis, I already knew I was going to have to step up. Things were going to get harder,” she said. “I had time to figure out what I was going to do. I worked a bunch over the summer. I saved up to get my own car. I had a lot of time to try to be an adult before I had to be an adult.”
“I still had to get up every day and go to school every day.”
— McKenna Tobin
Now, things are stable, she said. She is thankful for the lessons her father taught her over the years.
“He was in his 80s, so he had a lot of wisdom. He went through a lot, too. … He taught me and my sister how to budget, save your money … (and) that a lot of wants aren’t needs.”
At Lowell High School, McKenna was a self-described “plain Jane, no sports, no clubs.” She had other priorities.
She received support and a listening ear from counselor Trisha Wallace and teachers.
“She was experiencing things as an adult that I have never experienced,” Wallace said, noting the weight of caring for her father, herself and dealing with related family issues. “Every time I was with her I would say ‘I can’t believe you are handling this so well, I am not sure I could handle this as well.’”
Teacher Katrina Alexander taught McKenna in middle school, and French and English in high school.
“McKenna has a big heart. We both lost our fathers this school year. Even though she was hurting from the loss of her own father and the insecurity his death brought her before she turned 18, she reached out to me and asked how she could help me through my own grief. This caring for others will be an asset in whatever career path she chooses,” Alexander said.
“As a teacher, I see so many students with potential and a bright future ahead of them, but sometimes they let distractions keep them from their goals. McKenna makes her future — and the training she needs to achieve it — a priority. Her potential is boundless because she has developed the maturity to weigh consequences, and she knows how to weed out the distractions that will keep her from the life she wants to lead.”
McKenna said she’s had many social workers help her over the years, which is why she is pursuing a degree in the field. She wants to work with young people like herself.
“I want to help them through anything and everything, even if you just had a bad day at school. I want to be the person that’s there, like a lot of people were for me.”
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