DEA Benefits with a Adoption

Hi! I’m trying to help my sister enroll into college, she was adopted by a sweet older couple who passed right after she graduated high school. They had adopted her as a newborn.

As you can imagine that was a rough time for her and military benefits, SSN, and even Death Certificates were not on her mind. She’s prepared to locate them now. The church her family went to ‘helped’ her out quite a bit. Now that she’s ready to enroll into college I thought I’d look into scholarships/programs she may be able to get to alleviate the burden, and found the DEA program for survivors and dependents. It seems like she’d qualify as her father

:was medically discharged due to an injury

:she’s just 24(I’m reading the cut off is 8 years after turning 18)

But I also read another cut off being 20 years after injury. He’d be almost 80 now, or do they make exceptions?

If you have any other resources for dependents she may qualify for please drop any info as this is the first thing I’ve found for her relating to being a dependent.