PROVIDENCE — Rose Quigley occasionally finds herself on the fifth floor of the Rhode Island Family Court, where she has worked for two years as a case manager in the juvenile drug court unit. When she is there, Rose keeps an eye out for the children who are waiting in the wide hallway while their parents see judges behind closed doors.

Rose Quigley, right, meets with Family Court Judge Francis Murray, left, her mentor Carlos Silver, and Courtney Correia in Murray’s courtroom.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy Mary Murphy

“I remember me and my brother having races in the hallway,” says Rose, now 23, who graduates this evening with a master’s degree in social work from Rhode Island College. “We would stand on the big glass panels and look out the window.”

Rose thinks she was about 7 and her brother, Billy, 6, the first time they went to Family Court with their mother, Barbara. Rose remembers the clothes she wore — black leggings and a tie-dyed skirt. “The ugliest outfit ever,” she says, laughing.

Rose is not entirely sure why they had to go to court. It may have been a domestic dispute between her mother and her boyfriend. Rose does remember going to the zoo afterward.

Rose could ask her mother or request her file from the state. But Rose isn’t ready to know the whole story and doesn’t know if she ever will be.

“I still don’t think I’ve healed,” Rose says. “I think I try to fill my time so I don’t have to deal with it.”

Rose was 14 when she and Billy became wards of the state, placed under the protection of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families. Barbara Quigley, a single parent, was battling addiction and was in and out of prison.

Today, Rose has a strained relationship with Barbara. Her mother missed her graduation from Mount Pleasant High School in 2001 because she was in prison on arson charges. But Barbara was there two years ago when Rose, the first person in her family to finish high school, graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies.

Tonight marks another milestone. But Barbara might not be there because she felt she needed to work.

Rose says it doesn’t bother her. The fact that her three closest friends will be there means a lot, Rose says.

But the realization of how far she has come hits her every time she sees those children waiting on the fifth floor.

“I do feel bad when I see them, because I know how it feels,” Rose says. “But I also feel like they are going to be all right.”

ROSE’S BACKGROUND helps her do her job. She works with teens who are first-time drug offenders and truants. Her clients confide in her and seek her out for advice.

“My role is to get these kids to value education,” Rose says. “We need to show them how to have fun without drugs and show them how important school is.”

Rose says she understands why her clients make the choices they make — to do drugs, skip school or go to parties where they could get into trouble — even though she chose differently when she was their age. She was an honor student, captain of the softball team, member of student government, and a teenager who worked more than 40 hours a week to help provide for her and her brother.

“I knew how to get myself out of a bad environment,” she says. “But I had a lot of supports. I knew how important school was because it felt good when I did something and I was praised by all my teachers, my principal, my guidance counselor. Some of these kids, they don’t have that.”

At first, Rose’s empathy for her clients meant she got too close.

“My biggest thing was that I wanted to fix everything for them, in the beginning,” Rose said. “If they needed shoes, I’d want to get them shoes. If they needed a ride on the weekend, I’d give them a ride. But trying to fix everything is one of the worst things you can do.”

Rose’s co-workers say her compassion shines through.

“What she brings to the table is an energy we don’t often see,” says Carlos M. Silver, deputy director of juvenile drug court. “She does not want to give up on a single kid in our program. She calls me at 10, 11 o’clock at night to talk about a kid. I say, ‘Rose, we can do this in the morning.’ But that’s the way she is, always thinking, always working.”

Silver credits Rose with helping to start a substance-abuse counseling group for youth without health insurance, who couldn’t afford the court-ordered recovery program.

“We knew what the problem was, but the question was, who was willing to do it,” Silver says. “Here was a young lady in school full-time, and working two jobs, and she said, ‘Let’s start a group here.’ ”

So far, about 56 teenagers have participated, Silver said.

“Rose is able to articulate how valuable it is for her to understand where these kids are coming from,” says Frederic Reamer, Rose’s adviser at RIC. “She demonstrates that special combination of empathy and the appropriate professional distance so she can maintain perspective.” (Coincidently, Reamer, also a member of the Parole Board, oversaw Barbara Quigley’s parole.)

Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah holds Rose up as an example to other young people in tough circumstances.

“She’s proven one thing to me that I say to a lot of the children who appear before me,” Jeremiah says. “In spite of the fact you have had a very difficult life growing up and you may not have had the support that you needed, you can succeed if you want to: look at Rose.”

TONIGHT’S COMMENCEMENT brings mixed emotions.

Rose is more convinced than ever that social work is the right path for her, and she is already thinking about completing a doctoral program one day.

“I am a social worker inside and out,” she says. “I get up and there is never a day when I don’t want to go to work. We are able to take something bad that happened, like an arrest, and address these kids as people, not as criminals, and help them.”

Rose says graduate school has opened her eyes to issues of social justice and taught her about policy and politics. She submitted testimony at the State House this spring, pleading for Governor Carcieri to preserve state aid that helps 850 young people in foster care pay for college. Such assistance made URI and RIC possible for her, she says.

At the same time, this graduation is more nerve-wracking than the others. After high school, she knew she had college. After college, she knew she had graduate school. Now, she wonders about her future.

Other things have changed. She moved into her own apartment in Pawtucket. Rose and her longtime boyfriend broke up a few months ago.

“For so long, I had everything planned. I was going to graduate from high school, go to college, buy a house, get married and have kids,” she said. “That was going to be my life. But now, where is my life going? I’m sort of scared.”

BARBARA QUIGLEY will be thinking of her daughter at the graduation.

“I am very proud that she is going into the profession she is,” Barbara says. “She really wants to help people.”

Barbara holds two waitress jobs and needs to work her shift tonight. Rose, who also works part-time at the Autism Project of Rhode Island, inherited her mother’s work ethic.

But Barbara won’t take any credit for her daughter’s success.

“I don’t think Rose was my doing,” she says. “I think Rose was her own doing.”

jjordan@projo.com