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Her father named her Promise, because he promised never to leave. Even after her parents separated when she was 1, she would visit him every summer and Easter break, traveling from the Bronx to Virginia.

When she was 7, he was arrested in front of her on drug trafficking-related charges. He would remain in prison for nearly 14 years, convicted of felony drug possession and distribution.

“My dad was my best friend when I was little,” Promise Rone, 21, said. “He was like my favorite person.”

After he was arrested, her behavior changed drastically. She got in fights at school. Her grades plummeted. She even had to relearn how to read.

At 16, Ms. Rone started working — first at a community college, then at a children’s clothing store — to help her mother with household expenses. Although going to high school and working up to 40 hours a week was very difficult, she enjoyed being busy, and she liked the independence that money gave her.

At the beginning of her final semester of high school, though, tensions with her mother intensified. Ms. Rone and her mother had a disagreement, and Ms. Rone moved out. They reconciled shortly before her graduation, but at the end of the summer, Ms. Rone moved out again. This time, she didn’t go back.

“I just decided that I’d rather have my own space than not be sure if I have a place to sleep tonight,” she explained.

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Ms. Rone moved into a friend’s house and enrolled at Guttman Community College in Manhattan in 2015, studying human services. In early 2016, she moved into an apartment in the Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, living with two roommates and working at a grocery store to support herself. But she hated the work because of the low wages and lack of opportunity, so she started finding housekeeping jobs, using the app Handy.

She was able to quit her job at the store and pay for textbooks and her cellphone. But she could no longer afford her apartment, and in May 2017 she moved into her grandfather’s home in order to save money.

In March, she was assigned through Handy to clean the apartment of Damian Eckstein. They started chatting as she worked, bonding over their favorite Marvel superheroes. When she returned for a second cleaning in June, Ms. Rone told Mr. Eckstein about her plans to go into social work. She likes trying to figure out how people tick, she said, piecing together the tiny threads that make up the tapestry of someone’s life.

Mr. Eckstein told her that he was the senior operations manager at Children’s Aid, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And he offered to help.

“It was total random kismet,” Mr. Eckstein said.

The next day, he referred Ms. Rone to Gwendolyn Taylor, the director of the agency’s Providing Opportunities, Wellness, Education and Resources program, hoping that she might be able to offer Ms. Rone a paid internship. While the agency did not have the money to employ Ms. Rone, it did use $325 from the Neediest Cases Fund to help her buy professional attire and groceries. Ms. Rone selected a pair of boots from Payless and some slacks and button-down shirts from Marshall’s.

Ms. Rone hoped to use her new outfit to find an office job. Cleaning houses has taken a toll on her physically; she has a bad back and is unable to be on her feet for more than a few hours at a time. But when it comes to office work, she said, “Someone has to feel like they want to take a chance on you.” And nobody, it seemed, would.

Her desire to move into office work grew stronger this summer after she received a diagnosis of a kidney infection, which forced her to cut back on her housekeeping hours and take a semester off from school. For someone who was accustomed to being independent, the sudden inertia was maddening.

“It feels like your body is depressed,” Ms. Rone said. “In your head, you really want to move, you want to get this stuff done, but your body feels just so tired of everything.” The first round of medication failed to take care of the infection, so she had to take a second. Some days, she could not even get out of bed.

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Slowly, though, she began to feel better. These days, she is optimistic. She has patched things up with her mother. Her father was released from prison in February, just before her 21st birthday. She recently moved in with her boyfriend and adopted a dog, Bella. And she is set to return to school in February, with one semester left until she graduates with her associate degree.

“That’s my most important thing right now: making sure everything is lined up so I can go back,” she said.

She is eager to move on to a four-year college next fall, where she plans to study psychology and film.

And Ms. Rone has finally been hired for an office job. She started working in December as a part-time receptionist for an insurance company in Queens. She has told her employer about her return to college and is hopeful that she will be able to adjust her schedule.

When she interviewed for the position, she was wearing her new outfit.