PORTER RANCH, Calif. – When your own mailbox is about as far as you can go, what’s inside really counts. 

Jodi Larman is grateful for something to look forward to these days. She’s a mother who collects milestones and her baby boy’s high school graduation has her looking back at the past 18 years. 

She’s amassed an encyclopedia of Shawn: the curls from his first haircut, print outs of emails she sent her family, and his preschool graduation certificate. 

It’s a record of the good, the bad, and the scary – a heart wrenching diagnosis at age two that Shawn had a developmental disability so severe he would never learn his alphabet. 

“This is my child and you’re telling me there’s something wrong with him,” Larman remembers thinking. 

But of all the people to be given a child with special needs, no one could be more prepared than Larman, a psychologist who has worked with children and adults with disabilities. He persevered through every kind of therapy you can think of. 

A break-through came in the sixth grade when he was moved into regular education. 

Fast forward more years, and the kid who was never supposed to learn his ABC’s is graduating from Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

But rather than celebrate with his classmates, Shawn is staying home like everyone else. The milestones that kept him going have been swept away by the threat of Covid-19. 

No prom night, no senior job, no grad night, no walk across the stage. 

Perhaps the biggest milestone – college orientation – is happening online. Shawn is enrolling at Mission College and will major in Administration of Justice in the fall. 

Extended family had already booked flights to see him. They’ve all been canceled. 

That doesn’t mean they forgot about Shawn. 

That’s why every day his mom checks the mail and tucks away what she finds – 50 cards and counting. 

A celebration of Shawn – an outstanding member of the class of 2020.