LOS ANGELES — Turning 32 isn’t usually a major milestone, but this is the year everything could change for Al Daniel.

Daniel's gift didn’t come wrapped in a bow or fancy paper — just a simple FedEx envelope from New York.

Inside were precious copies of Daniel’s birth certificate, ending a 16-year struggle to prove his identity after growing up in foster care.

Spectrum News first met Daniel almost six months ago in a homeless encampment in Harbor City, where he explained his struggles to get a photo ID. After growing up in California’s foster care system, he didn’t know enough about his birth mother to prove his identity.

Without a photo ID, Daniel has spent his adult life unable to cash a check, open a bank account or regain custody of his kids.

“Once I get the things that I need, I’m very sure I’ll be able to see them again,” Daniel said in November.

More than 21 million Americans are without a photo ID, according to Kat Calvin, executive director of Project ID, the only national nonprofit dedicated to the issue.

Calvin launched Project ID to help fight voter suppression in states that require an ID to vote, but quickly realized voting was the tip of the iceberg.

“It took five seconds for me to realize IDs for voting is not the big problem here,” she said. “If you don’t have an ID to vote, you don’t have an ID for jobs, for housing, for nights in most shelters, for food at most food banks.”

Employees with Project ID are at the Skid Row Community Refresh Spot every Wednesday afternoon, doing the detective work of getting birth certificates from all over the world and then shuttling homeless people to the DMV. On a recent trip, many told Spectrum News that IDs are often stolen or thrown away in encampment cleanups. Others had been undocumented for decades.

In the U.S., requirements to get a certified copy of a birth certificate can vary from county to county. So does the price, with the nonprofit spending about $100 per client. Calvin works with a lawyer to solve the most difficult cases.

“We had someone who was kidnapped as a child,” she said. “I would say it’s less than impossible. Usually, there’s just some birth certificates that are really challenging to get.”

One of Calvin’s hardest cases at the moment involves a person who was born at an air force base in Casa Blanca that was demolished in the 1970s. The nonprofit refers undocumented immigrants to Catholic Charities USA.

While spending multiple days a week at the DMV may sound like a version of hell to many, Calvin and her employees and volunteers are doing deeply emotional and powerful work across the country. Behind the scenes, they are pushing for legislation to make the process easier.

“If you are a person who is underprivileged in one way, you are immediately underprivileged in all the ways because all the barriers hit all the same people,” Calvin said.

Once they get to the nearby DMV, the process is anticlimactic. While some states will print a new ID on the spot, in California they are sent through the mail.

For many, a few weeks is worth the wait to rebuild their lives.

“We’ve had people who haven’t had IDs for 20, 30, 40 years and just talking to them about how different their lives would have been if they had (an ID), you realize, ‘Oh, this is a thing that stops people from being able to move forward at all,’” Calvin said. “No other country has this problem. It’s just us.”

A grassroots volunteer named Dani helped Daniel finally get his birth certificate, ending his 16-year struggle.

Within days, he was at the DMV applying for a photo ID, the first step to employment, independence and, hopefully, an apartment of his own.