Next time you’re in Princeton, take a good look around. Odds are if you look hard enough amid the beautifully dressed, well-coiffed residents and the tony students who complete the quintessentially American town and gown landscape, you’ll notice someone like Keefe.

Keefe, 18, hails from Princeton. He recalls life there this way: “It was actually quite a short time for me. My mom was a cocaine addict and I was 16 when it all came to light and started to fall apart for me.”

At 16, Keefe found himself “going in and out of psych wards” before he came to the attention of the state Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS). “When DYFS came into my life, I went into group homes. When I was 18, I was at a group home and I aged out.”

Aged out.

This deceptively simple phrase can be really terrifying if you happen to be the one it applies to.

Look it up in Wikipedia and you’ll find it is “popular culture vernacular” used to describe anytime a “youth” – such as Keefe – leaves a formal system of care designed to provide services to those below a certain age level.

An estimated 30,000 adolescents “age out” of foster care in the United States every year. The Child Welfare League of America reports that as many as 36 percent of them become homeless, 56 percent become unemployed and 27 percent of males who age out become jailed.

Those are miserable statistics but it gets even worse. The San Francisco Chronicle did a study and reported that less than half of emancipated youth who have aged out graduate from high school compared with 85 percent of all 18-to-24-year olds; fewer than 1 in 8 graduate from a four-year college; two-thirds don’t maintain employment for a year; fewer than 1 in 5 was completely self-supporting; more than a quarter of the males spent time in jail and four of 10 became parents as a result of unplanned pregnancy.

What separates Keefe from those statistics?

Covenant House.

He’ll tell you straight out that on the night he was going to be discharged from the group home in Woodbridge, he “got lucky” and found Covenant House.

Simple as that.

That was on Oct. 9. He’s been in safe harbor at Covenant House in Newark since the next day and remains safe.

“Me being here, it’s been an eye opener,” Keefe said the other day. “I’m learning a lot here. I never got to learn anything about being independent before…about responsibility. They are providing me with skills and opportunities where I can become more of a responsible adult. It’s all starting to meld together for me.”

Father David Fox works at Covenant House, Newark. Keefe, he says, is a “great illustration” of the kids who turn up at Covenant House in that Essex County city or Atlantic City from around the state.

“It just happened Keefe grew up in Princeton….We get kids from all over New Jersey,” Father Fox said. “We get calls from every county. We get calls on our international line.”

The kids turn to Covenant House, Father Fox said, “because we offer something different.”

What they offer to those who need rehab, who are homeless or, like Keefe, just an inch away from being homeless, is a multifaceted approach that includes a chance to become a responsible human being.

“A lot of the kids come in with the same story,” Father Fox said. “They are pushed out and what we do is fill the gap in the time period between when they age-out and when they are ready to become adults.

“We don’t have the resources to cultivate them through college,” he said. “The emphasis here is on work first, education second. Ideally, in four to six months, they’ll be stabilized, we’ll help them find a job.

“We demand that they are back at Covenant House each day at 9 p.m.,” Father Fox said. “If they turn up past 12 p.m., they are automatically discharged.

We roll it all into a case plan.

“It might work out to be exploring (disability) or job seeking. For other kids, it might be going to addiction class. Whatever the next step, if the kid is committed, we are committed.”