She graduated while homeless. Now she's looking for video of one of her proudest moments

When Rexx Lipkovits received her Grade 12 equivalency diploma, she was 18 or 19 years old and living in a tent in Kelowna, B.C.

Graduation day was one of her proudest moments.

Now, more than six years later, she's residing in a small house in West Kelowna with her boyfriend, and things are good.

But one important piece is missing from her life: the DVD of her Central Programs and Services graduation ceremony. Each graduate was given one, and it includes all the pictures from that meaningful occasion in 2016.

Lipkovits lost her copy and would like to get her hands on one.

"Somebody has to have it," Lipkovits said in an interview with CBC Radio West host Sarah Penton.

"It would mean everything [to see those photos] ... I've never seen them before and I think it would be a good way to move forward and remind myself, 'You did it. You actually did that.' It would be a good motivator for the next journey in my life, to remind myself that, things are hard, but don't give up."

Lipkovits lost her copy of the DVD at some point after her graduation from Central, a school with an alternate education program for students facing unique challenges. She says she was homeless for a period of time after finishing school, and the disc went missing from her possessions.

Lipkovits has been in touch with the principal at Central, who confirmed to CBC that school staff are aware she's trying to track down the 2016 graduation DVD.

'So you wash your hair in the river, you go to school...'

Lipkovits says she moved around B.C. a lot when she was a kid. So, every seven or eight months, she was at a different school.

When she got to Grade 5, she says she "had some family troubles" and was getting bullied by students — and then by teachers — at her school. She says she was eventually kicked out because she "smelled bad."

For about five years, Lipkovits says she lived with her grandmother in Port Alice on Vancouver Island and there wasn't a school for her to attend. By the time she was 16, she was back in Kelowna and says Central was the only school that would take her.

She enrolled in Grade 10 classes and made it all the way through to graduation, despite her circumstances.

"The way I [saw] it, you wake up in a tent at 6 a.m. and you go, 'Oh, I have school in a couple hours.' So you wash your hair in the river, you go to school, and it was the one place where that didn't matter."

On the day of her graduation, Lipkovits says she got dressed and put on her makeup in the bathroom of a local McDonald's.

As for completing her Grade 12 equivalency, she says Central was willing to help her.

"I feel like a lot of the homeless people have a hard time seeing that they're worth something, because people don't give them the chance," she said.

"But if you just keep doing what you need to do, it really makes you feel like you belong in society."