A 23-year-old student sheltered a homeless pregnant cousin to give her a chance at a better life

Tommy Connolly hadn't seen his little cousin for ten years, but she suddenly added him as a friend on Facebook. The 23-year-old Sunshine Coast University student was enjoying the holidays and training to become one of Australia's champion sprinters. He texted his 17-year-old cousin Angela (name changed for legal reasons) to find out how she was doing. The girl's answer stunned him: she was homeless, uneducated, and 32 weeks pregnant.

Tommy took Angela from the Gold Coast, where she spent the night in the open air, allowed her to move in with him, took care of the girl at the last stage of pregnancy and is now helping her raise her son.

(6 photos in total)

Source: Daily Mail

"I went and got her. She began to tell me about the situation in which she found herself. It was hard for me to hear that, since she was my favorite cousin when I was growing up. As far as I knew before, she was fine… But it turned out that this was not the case at all. In fact, she was living on the streets, addicted to methamphetamine and doing terrible things to survive. She had nothing," the guy says.

According to Tommy, Angela graduated from only six grades. She stopped taking hard drugs by the age of 15, but at the age of 16 she became pregnant, and soon after that the father of her child was sent to prison.

When the guy met his cousin, he took her to him without hesitation. "It's not her fault, she's just a little girl who needed help," he says. "Of course I won't let her live on the street. Everyone likes to tell me what a big responsibility it is, but I didn't think about university, or work, or anything, I only thought that she needed my help."

Since Tommy was on vacation, he worked full—time at a wholesale fruit and vegetable store and saved 2,800 Australian dollars - just enough to move to another apartment and buy basic necessities for a baby. He took a break from training in order to work more and be able to save money, but at the beginning of the next semester he returned to full-time studies.

When Angela gave birth to Joshua (name also changed), Tommy was waiting for them at the hospital, although he had to go to university the next day. The guy stayed up all night preparing the presentation. Now Tommy has to work three days a week in addition to studying to feed all three of them. Of course, he would like to spend his free time with friends or traveling, but he does not mind that Angela and Joshua appeared in his life.

"My closest friends are in training, they are athletes and don't hang out every day. Most of the time they work, train and study, so I'm in good company," says the student.

Tommy's brother, Liam, started a page on the GoFundMe crowdfunding resource to financially help the trio. Since the story hit the Internet, Tommy has been receiving messages from all over Australia about how good he is. In addition, he realized from the messages that there are a lot of people around in a similar situation. "I can't believe how many people went through the same thing, and they had nowhere to wait for help or support during pregnancy.

"At first, when Joshua was born, I had no emotional attachment to him, I just took care of Angela. But I really care about him, he's like my child, and I took on the role of a father. Angela does 90% of everything, and if I have to put my life on pause for just a year or two to make sure that two people will be saved, it's an insignificant sacrifice."