Confidence-building
LAKEWOOD/EAST DALLAS ADVOCATE VOL. 33 NO. 7
PROFILE
20 East Dallas’ nonprofit leaders
FEATURES
10 Happy Hookers turns 10
14 Bonnie Parker haunts Swiss Circle
28 Women to know in 2026
DINING
16 My Dream Latin Cuisine COLUMNS
8 Opening remarks
38 The call of the Rio Grande Chirping Frog
CC Young’s Happy Hookers, who crochet sleeping mats using plastic bags, celebrated their 10-year anniversary in March. Read more on page 10. Photo courtesy of CC Young.
Hello!
By JEHADU ABSHIRO
You know when I tell people my job, their first instinct is to say, “like Miranda Priestly,” or some other fancy editor. And I assure them, hyperlocal community journalism doesn’t really have space for all that. My job is probably more similar to her first assistant, except I have to do payroll.
For more than a decade, our July issue has been our women’s edition. For about six years, it was referred to as Fierce Females. We’ve gone back to just referring to it as the women’s edition.
In the entirety of the Advocate’s existence, even when my predecessor, Rick, was running the show, we’ve had a staff made predominantly of women. Seeing as our audience averages 60% women and most journalism schools skew female, it makes sense.
Our women’s edition has featured an interesting cross-section of women across the city — a world champion boxer, one of the creators of Sesame Street, a leader in community gardening for public schools, the women running some of the most influential PR companies, neuroscientists, artists, nonprofit leaders and teachers. The list of dynamic, creative and exciting people we’ve written about is comprehensive.
That’s why, for the month of July, we’re sharing a story of one of the many women we’ve written about every day on social media. You’ll see a special section in our newsletters featuring the weekly seven.
One of my favorite aspects is how many times we find these women because their significant others, colleagues, children and friends contact us to let us know how influential or kind they are. How much they believe in the work she’s been doing. How she’s changed lives. How they’ve pioneered in a space that needed to be changed. She’s one of the best people they’ve met.
But this issue is particularly special to me because it marks five years since I’ve been the president of Advocate Media. Back in 2021, when we were making the transition into a nonprofit newsroom and I was appointed the president in the midst of a pandemic and general uncertainty, I was 26 years old. I regularly remind Rick what an insane decision it was to leave his legacy in the hands of someone who could barely rent a car without young driver fees, for crying out loud.
But the perk of working in this industry is talking to an exhaustive list of people who can teach you a little bit of something.
This includes our former editors and neighbors, like Keri Mitchell, who is running the Dallas Free Press, or Lisa Kresl, who spent two decades at The Dallas Morning News, and our Judy Liles, who kept everyone, including Rick, in line. Or our former staffers who left our humble abode for fellowships, to chase stories much bigger than themselves or start their own businesses. There are our interns who have become news anchors, reporters, lawyers and Ph.D. candidates across the country. And of course, there’s our staff members like Jynnette Neal, who has been at the Advocate for more than 25 years, and seemingly has an archival memory of every story and photo ever produced here.
I’ve begun writing significantly less as the years have gone by (eight years!) and the number of photo shoots I attend has been greatly reduced. For this year’s issue, I’m shooting portraits of the cover story subjects for their stories. One thing I’ve learned at the Advocate, is I should find the room with the smartest person in it and listening to her is worth it. The room happened to be our photo studio this month.
sincerely,
P.S. I’m told that I am supposed to include something about why you should donate to support hyperlocal journalism. Please do! We have potholes, libraries, preservation, history, art, music, education, so much zoning and of course, interesting neighbors to write about.
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Advocate (c) 2024 is published monthly in print and daily online by Advocate Media - Dallas Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation based in Dallas and first published in 1991. Contents of this print magazine may not be reproduced. Advertisers and advertising agencies assume liability for the content of all advertisements and sponsorships printed, and therefore assume responsibility for any and all claims against the Advocate. The Publisher reserves the right to accept or reject ay editorial, advertising or sponsorship material in print or online. Opinions set forth in Advocate publications are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the Publisher’s viewpoint. More than 180,000 people read Advocate publications in print each month; Advocate online publications receive more than 4 million pageviews monthly. Advertising rates and guidelines are available upon request. Advocate print and online publications are available free of charge throughout our neighborhoods, one print copy per reader. For information about supporting our non-profit mission of providing local news to neighborhood readers, please call 214-5604204 or email jabshiro@advocatemag.com
Preston Scott Pannek, artist and owner of Blowouts & Company, finished his Don’t Pannek series in Deep Ellum on the side of The Nines Bar on Main Street. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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CC Young crochet group spends the last decade giving plastic bags a second life
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS
“One, two, three, Happy Hookers!”
For their 10-year anniversary in March, the older women at the retirement home CC Young shouted the name of their group in lieu of saying cheese while getting their picture taken. And yes, Happy Hookers may sound salacious at first, especially for those who have never heard of it before, or picked up a crochet hook. But the concept is actually quite wholesome.
Wrapped around these women’s crochet hooks is “plarn” (plastic yarn) made from plastic bags. Together, they make sleeping bag mats, which can provide some cushion and insulation, to people who are homeless.
“This is a good thing we’re doing is using this trash that would be in our landfills or in our trees or wherever,” Happy Hookers member Gloria Little says. She joined the group, which was founded by the daughter of a CC Young resident, because she cares about recycling and knew how to crochet.
On an interpersonal level, the activity has brought the women (most of whom are residents at CC Young) together.
“I’ve been here 10 years in November,” member Joan Jackson says. “It just set me off here, made me feel like I found my place here.”
To make plarn, the bags are cut up and tied together in small knots, and when enough is made, it can be crocheted into the 6-feet by 3-feet mats. It takes about 600 bags and nearly 60-70 hours to make one mat, according to a CC Young press release. Over the years, the mats have been distributed to Austin Street Center, Cathedral of Hope, Catholic Charities, Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, Salvation Army, The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center and Wesley-Rankin Community Center.
Jackson even recalled a time that her great-grandson saw one of the mats being used in public.
“When he was about 6 or 7, his mother was driving down Central Expressway,” she says. “They turned under Central Expressway on Walnut Hill, I believe it was. There was a homeless guy. He had a cart from the grocery store, and there was all his stuff in it, and a mat was up on top. And (the great-grandson) said, ‘Stop, stop, stop — Mom, there’s a man with Gram’s mat.’ So we knew. And then I had seen at a bus stop a man had one around him. So it just makes you feel so good that there’s something we did.”
Once finished, the mats can turn out to be quite colorful, depending on the kind of plastic bags used. During the anniversary celebration, a few of the mats were displayed like artwork, and one member remarked that the Happy Hookers are adept at identifying which store the bags came from in any given piece.
Top
Bottom right: The Happy Hookers members, like Kathy Ramirez, take trash and make it into something useful for those who need it the most. Photos courtesy of CC Young.
As anyone who uses the plastic bags at the grocery store can guess, plarn is not in short supply. Back when Toys “R” Us was still firmly in business (though it has been trying to come back), Happy Hooker member Marilyn Hamilton hit the jackpot when she approached the staff to ask them to save bags for her.
“There was a box under the counter where she had written, ‘Bags for lady,’” Hamilton laughs. “Of course, they just throw those bags away at customer service, so they would stash them in that box for me. I would go in every six weeks or so, and she would very happily show me.”
Then, when the toy store closed, Hamilton scored two shopping carts full of bags. She said the experience emboldened her to approach more stores for plastic bags, like Dollar General, Academy Sports + Outdoors and Hobby Lobby.
And that’s before counting community donations, which Little described as “overwhelming.”
“We appreciate them, except that lady who straightens them out,” Little says. “She’s really funny. She gets so angry when they’re all crushed up like that, but if they bring them kind of halfway straight, she’s happy to smooth them out.”
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At this point, Hamilton says the group doesn’t need donations as they already have limited storage space.
Little continued crocheting a mat during the anniversary party. Her work looked to be about the size of a rolled up yoga mat with stripes of white and brown plarn. She said she had been working on it for about a month, both at the Happy Hookers meetups and during her free time at home.
“It’s very soothing, and I like that,” Little says.
CC Young residents and Point Members (who are nonresidents 55 years and older) are welcome to join the Happy Hookers, according to the press release. The group, which typically is attended by 11-15 people, meets up on Mondays.
Happy Hookers isn’t the only group Jackson participates in. She also enjoys chair volleyball and sign language classes. But Happy Hookers is the activity she looks forward to the most.
“It starts my week off well,” Jackson says. “We all usually start telling something funny, and then we back up each other when you have a loss in the family. It’s just a great group of women that take care of each other.”
Shamieh Law Is Proud to Celebrate Our 10 Year Anniversary
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS
Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
BEFORE BONNIE PARKER met Clyde Barrow and became one half of the most notable outlaw couple in the U.S., she was a waitress in East Dallas.
And now, she’s back in town to haunt us forever. Or at least, show up in a mural painted on what used to be her former workplace, Hartgraves Cafe (sometimes called Mrs. Hartgraves’ Cafe), near the intersection of Swiss Avenue and Hall Street. Oak Cliff Advocate reports that she worked there between 1928 to 1929.
The law firm Texas Defenders, which ironically focuses on criminal defense, moved into the crescent-shaped building last year. Attorneys Robert Abtahi and David Payma were fascinated by the idea of working in a historical location. Abtahi said it had been vacant for a while.
“It’s a piece of Dallas history,” Abtahi said in a previous article. “I thought it was a great opportunity to save a piece of history and really be stewards of it for the future. People talk about buying their forever home. David and I talked about this being our forever office.”
In fact, when setting up shop, the lawyers knew they eventually wanted to do something to commemorate Parker. So they recruited Jeremy Biggers, a Dallas native and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alumnus, to paint the mural.
In a March Instagram post showing off the finished mural, Biggers wrote the photo he depicted was taken when Parker was still a teenager nearly a hundred years ago at “a more innocent time in her life.”
“In general, it’s crazy to think about
the people 100 years ago walking the same streets you’re currently walking, but when you add in that layer of fame or infamy, seeing and touching that same building almost feels like ‘meeting a celebrity,’” Biggers said in his post.
However, the artist also clarified that the portrait could be seen as controversial and wasn’t meant to glorify Parker’s life and crimes.
“I think it’s important to document Dallas’ deep, rich history, and for me, that includes the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said on Instagram. “Especially now in a time where so many are trying to erase history. It’s not a ‘celebration’ of what Bonnie and Clyde did, but rather, identifies a historical landmark in the city that is part of their story.”
Chicken flautas, steak nachos and chicken quesadillas with pico de gallo, sour cream and guacamole make up The Sampler appetizer ($15.99).
Opposite: My Dream Latin Cuisine offers multiple kinds of enchiladas, including chicken and covered with traditional mole sauce ($14.50), served with rice and beans.
Like its name suggests , My Dream Latin Cuisine at Gaston Avenue and Tucker Street started with, well, a dream. Co-owner Ivette Ovalle’s mother, Laura, has worked as a waitress for years and always wanted to have her own restaurant. And Ovalle always wanted to make sure her mom, who raised her and her siblings by herself when her father was using drugs, was happy.
“I want to help my mom just like she helped me. She put me through college, put me through school,” says Ovalle, who grew up in East Dallas. “We’re not here for a long time, and I want her to at least take that chance of saying, ‘Hey, I got the opportunity to live my dream.’”
My Dream Latin Cuisine opened in March in place of the previous Mexican restaurant Las Favela that was there before. The restaurant is
truly a family project with Ovalle and her brother Antonio on board to make it happen. Chef Salvador Gamón and his brother Hugo head up the kitchen and have years of experience in the restaurant industry. Ovalle takes care of bookkeeping for the restaurant and helps where needed, such as with cleaning and dishwashing with her mom.
“In my career, I learned a lot of different flavors, a lot of different ways to cook,” says Gamón, who most notably worked at Mattito’s for 25 years in multiple roles. “So I was thinking one day, I want to open a restaurant with my own dream recipes, so that’s part of the menu. Every recipe I love to do.”
My Dream Latin Cuisine’s menu has Tex-Mex favorites, like a selection of enchiladas ($6.49$15.99) served with rice and refried beans. Seafood dishes, including shrimp a la mexicana ($19.99), fire grilled salmon ($20.50) and shrimp chile relleno ($18.99) are also available.
The restaurant serves brunch, not just breakfast tacos and burritos but Berry Good Pancakes with bananas and blueberry yogurt cream ($11.50) and Avocado Dream Toast topped with eggs, queso fresco, tomatoes, chives and brunch potatoes ($12.99).
My Dream’s Instagram announced the addition of a grilled chicken sandwich, bacon cheeseburger and ribeye ranchero.
“We want to provide a menu that has a little bit of everything Latin related,” Ovalle says, adding that the restaurant’s offerings are housemade.
One of her favorites is the Mexican flan ($9).
“I tell (the chef), ‘If I’m ever hungry, and you see me eating flan first, it’s because it’s really good,’” Ovalle says.
The goal is to keep innovating on the menu and have something for everyone, she says.
Gamón has high expectations for himself and his staff as he strives to produce plates made with the best quality possible.
“When I cook, I always try a piece of chicken to see the texture, the flavor. That way, I can sell a good product,” he says. “I feel bad when I sell something I didn’t like.”
The chef also wants the restaurant to be a happy place for employees and customers. Staff should come to work in a good mood and enjoy what they do.
“I have a rule in the kitchen: I want everybody to be friendly,” he says. “I explain to my co-workers, ‘You have to say hi all the time. You have to be positive.’”
Ovalle hopes the locals will give My Dream Latin Cuisine a chance, and she wants to see it grow. She has a vision of the restaurant serving the community, especially the working class who may be too tired after a long day to cook their own meals, and giving back. It was also important to her that the pricing on the menu was affordable for the quality of food being offered.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen unless you risk it,” she says. “We’re risking it, and we hope to be a nice, friendly neighborhood restaurant … the little restaurant at the corner that prepares your meal with love, a cozy place where you can come by and converse with someone, bring a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”
Ovalle admits that opening a restaurant hasn’t been easy. But her mom, who has felt excited and emotional over My Dream opening, says, “Luchar.”
“Which means we’re going to succeed and fight until we can’t anymore,” Ovalle says.
My Dream Latin Cuisine, 7260 Gaston Ave., 214.272.7967, www. mydreamlatincuisine.com
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS | Photography by KATHY TRAN
times may be tough for nonprofit leaders, but these organizations may also be more important than ever.
There are over a million public charities in the U.S. (more than half of which are run by women) and about 147,546 in Texas, according to the data website Candid. The need for services is increasing, per The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s State of Nonprofits 2026 report, while funding is uncertain, and burnout among nonprofit CEOs is on the rise.
So why keep working in the nonprofit sector? Because these leaders are passionate about the work they do. Look no further than East Dallas to find women who know the challenges and are moving forward anyways. And if you find a nonprofit that speaks to you, donating money or volunteering can help that organization continue to achieve its mission.
Everything changed when Heather Emmanuel Ormand gave up alcohol in 2011.
On the outside, she was fine. The Arkansas native graduated from the University of Richmond, had her job in accounting and lived in New York for the first part of her career. She eventually moved to Dallas in 2009 to be closer to family.
But on the inside, Ormand was miserable and suicidal. Her drinking habits compounded her previously diagnosed depression and anxiety. She called herself “undateable” at the time and says she sabotaged her personal relationships. Her therapist’s suggestion and her desire to have children someday
motivated her to stop drinking.
Now, she’s able to raise her children in a sober household with her husband and help women also find recovery as the CEO of the nonprofit Nexus Family Recovery Center in Far East Dallas.
Giving up alcohol prompted a career change.
“(I) really wanted to do something more mission focused, honestly, and just felt like I’d been given a second chance and really wanted to give back in a meaningful way,” she says. “I was never passionate about accounting.”
Having previously joined the leadership team at the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center, Ormand took the chance to work at Nexus in 2020 — despite COVID-19 pandemic madness at the time and having two young children at home.
“My husband was extremely supportive,” she says. “He was going to have to figure out the heavy lifting with childcare. I’ll never forget; he just said, ‘There’s never going to be an ideal time, and this is what you worked for, and this is happening now, but we’ll figure it out as a family,’ and that’s what we did.”
During the pandemic, it was important to keep Nexus open and be ready to help women who were ready to accept it. Nexus Family Recovery Center provides specialized substance use disorder treatment, as well as therapy services to women, including those who are pregnant or have children, who can accompany them into the treatment center and also receive care.
Unlike the resources Ormand had when seeking recovery, 30% of women who turn to Nexus for treatment are unhoused, and 90% make less than
“It’s literally my dream job. I get to look them in the eye and say, ‘You can do this.’”
$25,000 a year. And yet, Ormand is amazed at how they still put in the work for a better life.
“I get to lead an organization helping other women, and that means the world to me,” Ormand says. “It’s literally my dream job. I get to look them in the eye and say, ‘You can do this,’ and I’ve learned so much more just about resilience and hope and the tremendous effort that these moms put in every single day to help their kids, and it’s a miracle. In a time when there’s not a lot of hope in other areas of the world, I get to see people change every day.”
Surviving adversity
“Expect to fight. Expect to win.”
This phrase is printed on a throw pillow in Interfaith Family Services CEO Kimberly Williams’ office. And she knows what it’s like to fight and win.
“After about year two or three at Interfaith, I was starting to get a little exhausted of all the resistance that I was encountering,” the Skyline High School and University of North Texas alumna says. “One day during my devotion, it just became really clear that I’m a change agent, so resistance is a natural component of my life and existence, and so instead of becoming like bitter or upset about the resistance that comes, expect it, but don’t just expect it, expect to win at the end because every change or transition that I’ve taken organizations through, it turns out well.”
Interfaith Family Services, based near Lowest Greenville, helps families in poverty with housing, rent and utilities, job training and placement, and childcare. But 15 years ago when Williams stepped into her role, the organization was facing financial challenges and only had a 40% success rate. Williams says she focused on changing the service model from reactionary help in the shortterm to a hand up for long-term stability.
“We went from kind of an interven -
tion of like, ‘You’re homeless; let’s get you housing and get you into, what we primarily did then was transition into Section 8 or public housing,’ to change the model to, ‘You’re homeless; let’s see if we can provide training, financial coaching and educational support that will enable you to be not only stable but independent and transition into private housing,’” Williams says.
This is because public housing puts limits on the amount of assets that a person can have, which Williams remembers from her early career work. She says this can demotivate people from trying to save money and accepting promotions and pay raises to work themselves out of poverty. Despite her reasoning, not everyone saw her vision.
“A lot of people just didn’t think it was possible,” she says. “They’d never done it, never seen it, and so people were telling me that I was running the organization like a corporation and not a nonprofit, that we were losing the ministry edge. I’m a preacher’s kid, a licensed minister myself, but none of that mattered because I was focusing on outcomes and data and metrics.”
Within her first three years, about a third of Interfaith’s staff tried to get Williams fired for her approach, but the board of directors sided with her. Since then, Interfaith’s success rate doubled to 80%. Moreover, the rate for self-sufficiency after one year is 91%, and more than 80% of children within the nonprofit’s care “advance at least one level in reading and math every year,” Williams says. Seeing families achieve what they thought was impossible is her favorite part of her job.
Williams’ upbringing in the church (New Greater Memorial Family Church, currently in DeSoto) is what shaped her mindset. She quoted James 2:26 — “Faith without works is dead” — while recalling
her distaste for those who would talk the talk but not walk the walk in their Christianity.
“It’s not enough just to talk about helping people and tell good stories and get emotional,” she says. “I just saw too much pain in the world and having that same formula of, ‘Let’s get emotional, let’s pat ourselves on the back, let’s feel like we did something,’ I was like, ‘Nothing is ever going to get done like this.’ Seeing that as a kid really motivated me to do work that matters and work you can measure.”
The people Old East Dallas neighbor Januari Fox works with at Prism Health North Texas give her hope that everything is going to be OK.
Prism started out as an HIV prevention and treatment clinic in 1986 but now offers primary care, pediatrics and women’s health services. The nonprofit focuses on building and promoting equitable care. Fox is the policy, advocacy and community engagement director at Prism.
“The best part of my job is the people that I get to work with across the board, whether that’s here at Prism; our staff is amazing, and it takes all of us to get things done,” the Garland native says. “Our patients are incredibly resilient and active and engaged in their healthcare and in their communities, and I just am passionate about the work that I’m doing in general, and I do feel like it’s making a difference.”
Fox has always been social justice-motivated, particularly for racial justice when she was young. So in college, she pursued her undergraduate degree in political science and social sciences from the University of Houston-Downtown. After spending six years as a stay-athome mother, she studied political social work (i.e. – “policy, advocacy, community organizing and administrative practice”) in graduate school.
Then, Fox worked in government relations for Legacy Community Health, a federally-qualified health care center in Houston, for six and a half years. After that, she was a fundraiser at her alma mater, the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, but she lost her job amid the COVID-19 pandemic. When she posted about needing a new one on Facebook, she received a response within
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a day from Prism’s Chief Administration Officer Karin Petties, who she had worked with before.
And the opportunity being offered seemed unreal to Fox — creating Prism’s government relations department. Within a month, she started her new role.
“That was almost six years ago now, and I’m really proud of the work that we have done collectively because it has been a huge team effort,” Fox says.
Engaging voters, putting out a state legislative agenda every other year, and talking with lawmakers in Austin (including about adding HIV testing to standard sexually transmitted infections panels) and Washington D.C. are all part of Fox’s department. But lately, she’s been getting involved on the city level as well, particularly regarding keeping libraries open because they offer free resources and are voting centers.
“The Oak Lawn library is close to two of our busiest clinics, and the Oak Lawn library is also, I think, the second largest early voting center in Dallas,” Fox says. “So to close that down, that becomes a voter rights issue, and that becomes a lack of access issue, and we firmly believe that all elections matter and that everybody has the right to vote, and closing that down would cause a lot of issues for a lot of people in that area.”
Among her favorite people is her boss Petties — a mentor who has helped Fox grow and can give and receive honest feedback without getting offended.
“This is why I think it’s important to have women in leadership because I think that women do see things in different ways than men, and having a woman as a mentor and a guide has been helpful to me,” Fox says.
Forest Hills neighbor Brooke Fedro was living in Los Angeles (and was there for over 15 years), working in the entertainment industry as a producer, but she wanted to do more to impact the world.
So Fedro used her talents to raise awareness and money for causes she cares about.
“I started to shift my professional career to be in the intersection of where philanthropy and entertainment meet
and had the chance to do that through large scale concerts and events that are all philanthropic focused,” she says. What causes? Whichever ones spark her interest or speak to the stage of life she’s in — the clean water crisis, global poverty, climate change and, most recently, mental health as senior director of marketing and communications at Momentous Institute.
When moving to Los Angeles after college, Fedro worked for Creative Artists Agency, then with E! Entertainment and programs on ABC, CBS and Bravo. Things changed when she contributed her talents to Live 8, a series of benefit concerts hosted in an effort to fight global poverty on the 20th anniversary of the 1985 Live Aid concert.
“I had an opportunity to work alongside the executive producer of that, where we did 13 concerts in one day all around the world and just had a moment, frankly, where I was in the control room watching the production of it and started to get emotional because I saw that everything I had learned in working in the television space and working at CAA was actually going to be doing something good for the world,” Fedro says. “That was kind of it for me. I knew then that I couldn’t really go back.”
The Atlanta native met her Texas husband in Los Angeles, and after welcoming their second son, they moved to our state in 2013. She previously oversaw cause marketing at JCPenney and the store’s foundation before joining the Momentous Institute about four years ago.
The institute, founded by the Salesmanship Club of Dallas, provides mental health services to families, social emotional learning curriculum for young children, parent resources, and training for providers and professionals who aim to “(understand) and (support) children who have experienced trauma.” The organization also runs an elementary school that employs “mental-health-informed practices” in Oak Cliff. The Byron Nelson golf tournament has raised $195 million for Momentous Institute over the years. Fedro’s role includes initiating campaigns to raise mental health awareness.
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Women go well with nonprofits because women are natural problem solvers, Fedro says. She encourages those who want to pursue philanthropy to start, even if they’re not sure where.
“I think that it’s really important that you not feel like you have to have it figured out,” Fedro says. “There is a community of women here in Dallas that are really just trying to make a difference, and even if you don’t know exactly what that passion point is, it’s about getting in and just getting your hands dirty, do the work, and learn about how philanthropy works.”
Not one but two East Dallasites are leading the expansion of Braven, a national nonprofit organization that aims to help college students transition into the workforce, into the Metroplex.
Both Braven DFW Executive Director Elizabeth Caudill McClain and External Affairs Director Daizha Rioland feel at home in East Dallas. Rioland grew up in the Dallas Arts District, attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and now lives in Forest Hills with her family.
“We just knew we wanted to raise our daughters here,” Rioland says, referring to her and her husband. “It’s family friendly, and that was just something that really rooted us in East Dallas because I loved being able to have community.”
Meanwhile, Caudill McClain hails from South Irving and wound up in Dallas after a stint in Chicago. She moved from The Village to Downtown before she and her husband found a townhome in Old East Dallas, which gives him a backyard for gardening and being outdoors while also having a view of the skyline and walkability for her.
“When he and I were saying, ‘OK, we really want to invest and buy a place in Dallas. What does that look like?’ And so we would do this thing where we would be like, ‘OK, let’s plan nothing on a Saturday. Wake up, where do we feel like going?’ And we found ourselves always going east, like every time,” Caudill McClain says.
Dallas was the right place for Braven to expand, its first in Texas, because of what the Metroplex has to offer
plenty of higher education institutions and job opportunities. Caudill McClain interacted with Braven when she was with the Dallas Regional Chamber and also working on connecting education pipelines to businesses.
“I immediately was drawn to it because the outcomes were nuts,” Caudill McClain says. “It was just so cool to see the impact they were making, where the students who go through the program are 18 to 22 percentage points higher in internship attainment and completing their post-secondary credential and landing a strong first job.”
Rioland followed her husband into education and worked with an AmeriCorps service program called City Year that deploys members to schools to work with students on academic, workforce and interpersonal skills. Then, she heard about Braven and was intrigued.
“Braven was that perfect fit for me that balanced my passion for relationship building and wanting to enter into higher education (work),” Rioland says. “It was, again, just a natural fit. And then I met Elizabeth, and it was just like instant synergy that we had, that we love Dallas. We want to grow our lives here. We want other people to thrive in Dallas. And it was just something that we were both passionate about and like, ‘OK, let’s build this. Let’s hit the ground running.’”
Students in the two and a half to three-year hybrid program build their career plans, write their resumes, set up a profile on LinkedIn, participate in mock interviews, apply for jobs and internships, build relationships with volunteer leadership coaches, and get real world experience in problem solving. Career support is also available up to six months after graduation.
Any student can register, though there is a focus on aiding low-income and first-generation college students. Right now, those enrolled at the University of North Texas can take advantage of the Braven program, but the goal is to expand to other institutions.
“We want everyone to have a piece of the pie,” Rioland says. “We want everyone to feel welcome and included, and everyone should have access to the best possible education, outcomes, jobs, places to raise their family.”
Someone you could ask for advice or an amusing anecdote. The kind of woman who took unfavorable circumstances and made them favorable. The kind of woman who learns the rules to rewrite them. The kind of woman who props doors of opportunity open and invites the rest of us in. These are the people to know.
It all started with a Facebook post from a “memorable zebra.”
Jasmine Cadena was, in fact, that zebra, or that’s what Facebook called her when she posted anonymously in April. The Casa View stay-at-home mom is soft spoken, a little shy and didn’t want to put the spotlight on herself. The contents of her post? Pictures showing the overall crappiness of the Harry Stone Park playground and asking her neighbors if they were as concerned as she was.
“My mom was like, ‘Yeah, did you see that post from memorable zebra?’ And I was like, ‘That’s me,’” Cadena says. “She was laughing. She was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
Cadena has moved around a bit but has mostly stayed in the East Dallas area. She recalls fond memories of living in Casa View as a 10-year-old in 2003, with Harry Stone Park being a favorite hangout spot for her and her brothers. They walked to the park, which is next to her former elementary school, regularly.
She particularly remembers the park’s slide.
“We would all try to fit on it,” she laughs. “We wouldn’t really slide so much, but more lay down on it just to rest, I guess, from the walk.”
Her love of the neighborhood is part of what compelled the mother of four to move back to the neighborhood with her family less than a year ago in a house just down the street from the park.
“Then, I saw the condition of the park, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is not what I remembered,’” Cadena says.
A wood panel covered part of the play structure where children are meant to enter after climbing up a small wall. Graffiti could be seen in multiple spots, including at least one example where expletives were used. Overall, Cadena’s pictures show a playground that looks worn out, dirty and outdated.
Photography by JEHADU ABSHIRO
One of the most egregious ex -
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS
amples is a vertically-standing game, where children can turn knobs to race little cars inside. The areas surrounding the racetrack are black. Cadena says the game panel used to be clear, and the black stuff inside was mold.
“That was a definite safety concern for me as a mom,” Cadena says. “I didn’t want my kids, especially my youngest — I have a toddler — to get close to it. … I didn’t want him to touch it.”
These days, her children will use the park for its soccer field instead.
As of writing this, Cadena’s post has since garnered 84 reactions, 44 comments and four shares. The next day after sharing the photos on Facebook, she started a Change. org petition (under her real name since anonymity wasn’t an option). The petition calls for a replacement of the playground with one that is safe, modern, inclusive for children of all abilities and built with environmentally conscious materials. She also mentioned the need for better lighting and benches near the playground, plus concerns about it being so close to the parking lot without any barriers.
“I saw the traction,” she says. “Working with PTA, I know when parents get excited about something, you kind of have to catch it in that window. I guess off a strategy, remembering that, I was like, ‘We need to do this now. People are responding. If they see there’s a petition, they’ll sign.’”
Still, Cadena didn’t expect the response the petition has received — about 100 signatures a day, almost 500 in a week and 883 as of writing this — plus media coverage.
“I was caught off guard because I’m not a very social person. I don’t really like the spotlight,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh no, what’s going on? What did I do?’ But also kind of pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone because it’s needed, and it’s necessary to get things done.”
Along the way, Cadena met people who had wanted changes for the playground for a while. Neighbor Karen Ramirez recalls taking photos in the past to send to her city council member (in Harry Stone Park’s case, Jesse Moreno), and others have made 311 requests before. But now, there’s a community
movement that will be more difficult to overlook.
“I was excited that Jasmine took that initiative to post on there, and that everybody was in agreement,” Ramirez says. “It’s kind of like all these families that go there, or go by there, and they know the condition of it, but a lot of people have just kind of accepted it instead of gathering together. Now, I feel like there’s a movement with that. Jasmine taking the initiative to say the things that was kind of the quiet part that we were all like, not exactly saying in the bigger group was what was needed to get it going.”
Since then, the wheels of progress have been turning. Moreno has met with the group for a walkthrough at the park in April and joined the recently formed Friends of Harry Stone Park for a discussion about upgrades, among other topics, in May. The climbing wall has been repaired and replaced, and the plywood above it has been removed. The movement has also coincided with the creation of the Casa View Oaks Neighborhood Association to address other issues like people shooting firearms and racing.
“The neighbors are really wanting to get involved, look and see what they can do,” neighbor Juan Preciado says. “I know people are really passionate about their neighborhood and their playgrounds, so I think the energy is definitely there now.”
While they continue to push for changes to be made, Cadena and her peers are trying to keep the issue at the top of folks’ minds and continue to engage neighbors.
“That’s pretty much our goal right now is just making sure that people don’t forget about Harry Stone,” Cadena says.
Despite shyness, Cadena says standing up for what’s right has always been part of her personality. She would encourage others to do the same and find their voice as opposed to staying complacent.
“(I’ve) just always been the one to take the initiative, and if something is wrong, speak up about it,” she says. “Our community deserves these things as well as any other community.”
o to law school? “What, like it’s hard?”
Haleigh Jones, partner at Crawford, Wishnew & Lang, invoked that iconic Legally Blonde quote when revealing she decided at 12 years old that she wanted to go to law school someday.
“Nobody believed me,” the 36-year-old says, about 11 years after graduating from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.
Well, her mother believed in her and, in fact, planted that seed, observing that Jones was good at the lawyer necessities — reading, writing and arguing.
Unlike Elle Woods (at least in the first movie), Jones specializes in commercial law, not criminal. This part was inspired by her father, the original franchisee of Cicis Pizza, who was involved in a bad business deal that led to her family living on food stamps. She recalled that when
she was a high school freshman, buying a $7 ticket for a movie that she wanted to see with her friend was unaffordable. When she asked what exactly happened to put her family in that situation, her father replied that he should have consulted a lawyer.
So Jones set out on the path to be the kind of attorney who would’ve assisted her father.
“I felt like a lawyer would have really helped my parents make some decisions, both in terms of selling their business and filing for bankruptcy and how they approached that process,” she says. “My dad is a smart guy, but lawyers kind of hold the keys to the kingdom when it comes to the legal system.”
Jones was born in Dallas but grew up in Georgia and Ohio, the latter of which led her to study political science and Spanish at the University of Cincinnati. Her parents relocated back to our city before Jones was accepted into law school at SMU. Seeing that Dallas is a good place to be a lawyer, she decided to stick around after graduation and has been here ever since, currently on the edge of Lakewood and Junius Heights with her husband and newborn baby.
“I kind of started getting connected to the market in law school and was like, ‘I don’t ever want to practice anywhere else, really,’” she says. “This is kind of the best of best balance in terms of pay to cost of living to sophistication of the legal work that’s being done in Dallas.”
A connection in law school led her to her current firm. While at the Dallas location of Foley & Lardner, the firm that once employed Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, she received a call from a legal recruiter, whom she met at a banquet in her SMU days. He said three lawyers were starting their own firm and looking for an associate, but Jones wasn’t sure she wanted a new job. Eventually, she agreed to meet with the founders, but when she asked about their five-year plan, one of them, Trey Crawford, said, “To be the most badass law firm in Dallas.”
That didn’t impress Jones much. The recruiter, acknowledging the weird interview, convinced her to give them another chance and meet them for drinks. She ended up talking with Crawford for hours, and by the end, she was signing her offer on a napkin. What won her over was Crawford’s personality and the chance to establish her identity as an attorney.
“If you’re in a big firm, the people know
the firm name, but they rarely remember the lawyer,” she says. “It’s hard to distinguish yourself from the machine of the big firm. And he said, ‘Do you want to be Haleigh Jones, or do you want to be just another lawyer at Foley?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I want to be Haleigh Jones,’ and he was like, ‘Well, then come to my firm and be Haleigh Jones.’”
That was about eight years ago, and she feels like her risk paid off. Last year marked a milestone in Jones’ career when she argued before the Supreme Court of Texas — and won. The Supreme Court of Texas doesn’t take up every case filed, she says, so the fact that Jones was able to argue before the court and succeed is a big deal. And she did so pro bono and while 20 weeks pregnant.
“When the court walks in, it’s kind of a goosebumps moment of, ‘This is the highest authority in the state of Texas,’” Jones says. “Most of the law that affects Texans is created by the Texas Supreme Court, and so just seeing them come in, it’s a surreal moment as a lawyer when you’re looking at the highest authority in the jurisdiction in which you practice, and you’re going to try to convince them that you’re right.”
In grade school, we were taught that the legislative branch makes laws, the executive branch enforces laws, and the judicial branch interprets laws. That last one is what Jones’ case set out to do.
“What it means is that plaintiffs who are injured can rely on affidavits to establish that the medical treatment that they had to receive from their injury was reasonable in cost and medically necessary, instead of bringing live experts to trial,” she says.
Jones’ client was pulling out of a parking space at a Target when another driver backed into her vehicle. The plaintiff filed an affidavit that detailed her medical expenses, and the defendant only disputed 25% of them, meaning the majority were agreed upon. But the trial court wanted Jones’ client to bring in live medical experts to prove all the expenses.
And keep in mind — the specialists who work on these cases don’t come cheap.
“We pay doctors, sometimes, $2,000 an hour to work on a case,” Jones says.
When cases reach the state’s Supreme Court, precedents are set that affect all of us, not just those within the courtroom. Now, Texans pursuing personal injury cases can rely on an affidavit in court to
prove medical expenses are reasonable and necessary instead of being compelled to bring in live experts. They also have the choice to hire those live experts if they are vying to receive 100% of their costs or compromise on a settlement without the live testimonies.
“The defendant has a right to make his challenge, but where he’s not challenging certain claims or certain line items or some of the treatment, the affidavit should still be able to come in and be sufficient evidence of stuff that he’s not challenging,” Jones says. “That’s more aligned with the spirit of the rule, which is you don’t have to bring a live expert if it’s unchallenged.”
Another case stands out in her mind. Jones represented a young person in suing a Texas school district near Waco for failing to sufficiently help after she wrote about being sexually assaulted in a school assignment.
“It got sent to the assistant principal and the principal, who did not contact her parents, who did not contact a counselor, who did nothing with this information at a time she’s being sexually abused by this teacher in their system,” Jones says.
Jones and her team brought forth a municipality claim and a Title IX claim in federal court, lost the former, and the latter was settled out of court. That was her most difficult case, she says, and though it wasn’t a total loss, the unwon cases tend to stick out in general. And that’s just part of her career field. A lawyer can take on a hard case, give it their best and still lose.
“We have a saying here that we hate losing more than we like winning,” Jones says. “I always tell other lawyers who are trying cases and handling high-stakes appeals, ‘If you’re not losing, it’s because you’re not trying.’”
Despite her success, Jones still has imposter syndrome like the rest of us, including when she received the Texas Women’s Foundation Young Leader Award. She remembers questioning what made her special enough to achieve the honor. But she also has some advice for combating negativity.
“My No. 1 rule in life about being mean to myself is I try to talk to myself the way that I would talk to a friend,” she says. “I would never say to a friend who’s done the kind of work that I have, ‘You don’t belong on that stage.’ I would never say that to her, and she probably does belong up there.”
Two years ago, Chelsea Callahan-Haag was the No. 1 customer at her own store, East Dallas Vintage.
“I got this email from Square, and they were like, ‘Here’s all your data and your stats, and here’s your busiest day. And do you want to meet your top customer?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, I want to meet the top customer.’ I clicked on the button, and it was me, and I laughed so hard,” Callahan-Haag says. “So I have tried to not be the top customer, but it’s hard.”
Her career has taken twists and turns, but her current role could have been foretold from when she was a teenager growing up in Granbury in the early ’90s. She remembers visiting the former Dallas vintage store Ahab Bowen when she was young, one of the first that she had been to. She wore vintage clothes and hung out at her local thrift store — so much so that a woman who worked there bought her a present for Christmas.
“People would come to my house to try on my vintage clothes, and we would go somewhere weird, like the cemetery, and take pictures,” she says. “I guess I have always had a fascination with or interest in vintage or just like being different, being unique. Friends would come over in high school and wear my Levi’s bell bottoms or my polyester flower power shirt.”
Callahan-Haag has been following her passions throughout her life. She moved to Spain for a while with a man she was dating. She worked in the Dallas music scene at
Good Records and booked bands at Double Wide. She helped open the restaurant and bar Thunderbird Station during the COVID-19 pandemic, and even though it closed, she’s still proud of it and misses it.
The only sore spot on her resume was her human resources corporate job that she had in the 2010s and quit before the pandemic — that was definitely not her vibe.
“I’ve always been a numbers person, so I always really liked numbers and bookkeeping and payroll and spreadsheets. It was up my alley. But I also am a people person, so it was a good mix of things for me. I am just not a corporate person,” she says. “I hope I never have to work at a corporate job ever again.”
Her vintage store is a passion project, too, and her favorite job so far “by a mile,” she says.
Unlike her corporate job, she can have the work-life balance she wants because she makes the schedule. She did admit that it was difficult for her to take time off work for oral surgery recovery this year, not because she didn’t trust her managers but because she missed her shop.
“It felt really weird to be sitting at home and not be here,” Callahan-Haag says. “I may have come back a little before I should have, may have paid for it a little bit, but it was hard to stay away. I like being here, and I feel like I should be here, but I don’t overwork. I don’t have to overwork. It did take a lot of work to get here, but I’m to a point where I can take some time off or not work every single weekend.”
She previously had antique booths at
Story by MADELYN EDWARDS
multiple places, including North Dallas Antique Mall, and would also participate in pop-up markets.
“My husband would joke, ‘How much more stuff do you have to have before you can just open a store?’” she says. “I had multiple storage units.”
Callahan-Haag opened East Dallas Vintage with Melissa Maher (who she has since bought out) in November 2021 at Gaston and Carroll Avenues near Domino’s Pizza. The shop moved to its current location in a 100-year-old building near Peak and Bryan Streets a year later.
“We knew pretty quickly that we were going to a need a bigger place,” Callahan-Haag says. “Everything here is better.”
In March 2023, the store’s footprint expanded as the second side was opened.
“I know we’re not as big as some of the other places, but I like the size because everybody can get through it in one visit,” she says.
East Dallas Vintage was a success from the beginning. Originally, the store was a kind of pop-up, renting the space at Gaston and Carroll for only a few months. Business went well, so it stayed open permanently.
And the name of the shop as well as the location was intentional.
“East Dallas is the best Dallas,” Callahan-Haag says.
East Dallas Vintage currently has about 77 vendors (and there’s a waitlist for more), with some starting small and growing into a whole booth. All the paid employees are vendors,
so they are invested in the shop’s success, Callahan-Haag says. The front window display is decorated by two of the vendors in the store (Cycle Etc. Vintage and Harkensback) using items from other booths and has a theme each month — Tiki island, Sahara nights and Victorian Christmas, for example.
The store has received media attention, including an appearance in a Vogue listicle, and won the Greater East Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s Live Local Award last year. Even celebrities like Florence Welch of the band Florence + The Machine and Saturday Night Live alum Pete Davidson have crossed the shop’s threshold.
Callahan-Haag spoke kindly of both Welch and Davidson and was proud that she was able to make the latter laugh after she said, “I guess you don’t want to join our mailing list” at checkout. But the store owner emphasized prioritizing the shopping experience, even for celebrities without making a big fuss.
“I think it’s from working in the music industry, but I just don’t want to bombard someone,” Callahan-Haag says. “I want them to just be able to have a shopping experience without people asking for stuff from them.”
But she’s not surprised to see celebrities show up in vintage shops because they’re unique places. She even points customers, Davidson included, to other stores in the area as well as local bars and restaurants in the guide she gives to out-of-towners. She’s of a “rising tide lifts all boats” mindset in this way. Vintage, secondhand and thrift stores all have different items and vibes, and when people shop, they are usually going to multiple places, so it’s good for business to be around multiple shops and recommend them to customers.
“That’s not competition,” Callahan-Haag says. “It’s good. There’s enough for everybody.”
Similarly, she is proud that East Dallas Vintage is also a spot for community events and pop-ups in its backyard terrace. She doesn’t charge vendors to do this, seeing it as another mutually beneficial opportunity.
“I feel like it’s good for my business because more people come to my shop because they’re coming to their event,” she says. “You can’t own a small business and say that you’re part of the community if you’re not actively doing things for the community.”
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Story by VICTORIA
When Jennifer Klein left her small Texas town for the University of Texas in Austin, she planned on being pre-med. That was until she learned the program required four years of a foreign language.
Instead, the East Dallas neighbor ended up with an art degree and spent her last year working at a group home that took care of kids that had become wards of the state. Klein says she took the job because of the free apartment, but it was really her start working in direct care.
“I loved it, and that led me to getting my teaching certificate, and after working with kids that had been taken away or had really difficult lives, were in alternative schools, got in trouble at school. All this, as much as I loved
it, and I love the kids, I realized I’m not a great teacher, because there’s a lot of preparation that teachers do outside of class that I wasn’t doing,” she says. “So, for everybody’s benefit, I stopped doing that, and a friend had told me, ‘Why don’t you join the Peace Corps?’ because I didn’t have any obligations here, and I was like, ‘OK, what the heck?’”
After a three-month-long application process, she ended up finding herself back in teaching, but this time teaching art in Ghana and serving in the Peace Corps for two years. She was 29 and had no plan for the rest of her life when she came across an ad that set her on her next path: nursing school at Johns Hopkins University.
Her first day of class a woman named Marion
D’Lugoff came up to her and took her on a drive to the Lillian D. Wald Community Nursing Center. They talked all afternoon about direct care and what could be possible for her future bridging social work with medicine and health care. D’Lugoff, who led the center, went on to be Klein’s very first mentor and her experience at that center provided her the space to figure out what she wanted to do for her role in the health care world.
“I had this like daydream of being in this remote place where I was the only provider, and there was a show called Northern Exposure , and it was like they’re part of the community, the provider, but then I realized I’m a brand new nurse practitioner, I cannot be the only person, so after I interviewed at a few places out in like
Washington state and Indian health reservations. I was like, ‘OK, I’m not ready for that.’”
Instead, after her husband received an offer in Dallas, she went on to start her nursing career in a big city. After working at a site that didn’t pan out, she went on to work in South Dallas where a social worker told her to make a call to the first medical director for Prism Health North Texas (PHNTX), Keith Rawlings. A four-hour conversation led to a new job offer.
“So it was again just somebody gave me a door. I went through it and just happened to be the right door,” she says.
Her experience in antiretroviral treatment during her clinical rotations in Baltimore in 199495 helped as well.
“I had some exposure, but it had not dawned on me before that I had this big passion to work in HIV care or anything, but then when I got started in it, it was really clear that the science and the community health nursing meshed like perfectly for me,” she says.
Through her current role, Klein says she got her community health dream of taking care of such an awesome group of people, with some of her current patients she met on her very first day of work.
Not only does Klein serve patients as a family nurse practitioner at the Oak Cliff Health Center, which she has done since the building opened in 2011, but she also conducts research. She began that work in 2007 after PHNTX received the National Institutes of Health’s AIDS Clinical Trials Group grant.
“Usually those grants are given to huge organizations, like Hopkins was a site, Northwestern, and we were the very first, and I think still the only community health center ever to get this research grant,” she says.
That opportunity led Klein to be more involved on a national level of HIV/AIDs research with conference presentations and publishing journal articles. With PHNTX, she has helped to conduct investigator-initiated studies where their patients were able to participate in a lot of pharma trials for new drugs, like the clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines.
“I never thought I would get to do any of that, and just watching how fast the science changed, and being with the people who were doing it, and having this like integral way to bring the people who are really living with HIV every day, like these communities, like in Dallas, that we take care of instead of people in Chicago, LA, San Francisco, who are part of a huge hospital system, and so it was a way to kind of demonstrate to the HIV world that a small clinic could be as cutting edge as innovative and whatever, and be part of the things that are changing.”
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RAMON’S INT/EXT PAINT Sheetrock, Repairs. 214-679-4513
TEXAS BEST PAINTING LLC Resd,Interiors 30Yrs. 214-527-4168
TOP COAT 30 Yrs. Exp. Reliable. Quality Repair/Remodel. Phil @ 214-770-2863
VIP PAINTING & DRYWALL Int/Ext. Sheetrock Repair, Resurfacing Tubs, Counters, Tile Repairs. 469-774-7111
UNITED GARAGE DOORS AND GATES Res/Com. Locally Owned. 214-251-5428
GENERAL CONTACTING
A2H GENERAL CONTRACTING,LLC Remodel, Paint, Drywall/Texture, Plumbing. Electrical, Siding, Bathroom/Kitchen Remodels Tilling, Flooring, Fencing. 469-658-9163. Free Est. A2HGeneralContactingLLC@gmail.com
GLASS, WINDOWS & DOORS
LAKE HIGHLANDS GLASS & MIRROR frameless shower enclosures • store fronts replacement windows • mirrors 214-349-8160
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WINDOW MAN WINDOW CLEANING.COM Residential Specialists. BBB. 214-718-3134
HANDYMAN SERVICES
BO HANDYMAN Specializing In Historic Home Renovations & Pro Remodels. Custom Carpentry, Doors, Kitchens, Baths & more. 214-437-9730
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HANDYMAN SPECIALIST Residential/Commercial. Large, small jobs, repair list, renovations. Refs. 214-489-0635
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HK CONSTRUCTION
We Do It All. All trades. 214-717-8317
HOME REPAIR Doors, Trim, Glass. Int/Ext. Sheetrock, Windows, Kitchen, Bathroom 35 yrs exp. 214-875-1127
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ONE CALL WEEKEND SERVICES
Contractor & Handyman. Remodels, Renovations. Paint, Plumbing, Drywall, Electrical. 469-658-9163
A BETTER TREE MAN Trims, Removals, Insd. 18 Yrs Exp. Roberts Tree Service. 214-808-8925 Lawns, Gardens & Trees
BRUMLEY GARDENS. Landscape Design,Installation, Estate Maintenance and Commercial Services.
Shop Local And visit our Garden Center and Gift Shop. 10540 Church Rd. 214-343-4900
DAVIS LAWN CARE, LLC
580-222-4909 or davislawncare214@yahoo.com
Serving Lake Highlands & Lakewood.
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Raising the Standard of Outdoor Beauty
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O RGANIZATION
A CHARMING HOME
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AC PLUMBING Repairs, Fixtures, Senior Discounts. Gary Campbell. 214-321-5943
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Restoration
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WATER DAMAGE
cleanup & restoration: A small amount of water can lead to major damage and mold growth in your home. Our trusted professionals do complete repairs to protect your family and your home's value! Call 24/7: 1-888-872-2809
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PIANO LESSONS 30 years exp. Also voice & composition. Text (469) 708-6151
By PATTI VINSON
Rio Grande Chirping Frogs are loud but elusive creatures
It’s a neighborhood mystery that seems to roll around about this time every year. You’re enjoying a warm summer evening outside when you hear a loud, high-pitched chirp. Or maybe you’d describe it as the sound of rubber-soled shoes on a gym floor. Or is it the call of an unfamiliar insect?
Mystery solved: Let’s all welcome the Rio Grande Chirping Frog (RGCF) to the neighborhood.
For Lakewood Heights neighbor Brina Tignor, her search began in the house. “The first time I heard them, I thought the smoke alarm battery was dead, and the alarm was beeping.” She eventually traced the sound to her yard, posted a video on social media and got plenty of suggestions for what it could be, including the possibility she was hearing the Rio Grande Chirping Frog. She listened to a recording online and knew it was a match.
But finding the little guys was another matter. “I tried to see them with a flashlight, but they’re so elusive. Maybe they’re attracted to our fountain?” she wonders.
Perhaps Sam Kieschnick, Urban Wildlife Biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, can shed some light. “They’re quite small and secretive, despite that constant song,” he agrees. “They’re maybe around an inch in length, and I usually see them hiding under potted plants or in rocky cracks.”
He explains that these little brown frogs are native to the Lower Rio Grande Valley and northern Mexico, and have made their way to this area by hitchhiking on nursery plants. They’re readily identified by their distinctive vocalization. “They have these little ‘chirps’ that sound sort of like birds or squeaky toys, but after a little bit of rain or some humidity, you’ll hear this chorus all around.”
He adds, “I also notice them singing in the nights (usually summer, or at least when it’s above about 70 degrees) after I give my plants a good watering. They’re little bug eaters, so I consider them beneficial, even though I really do love bugs in general.”
But Kieschnick adds this reminder: “As amphibians they’re likely quite susceptible to pesticides — either themselves getting the poison in their skin or by getting the poison by the insects that they eat. Reducing pesticide use is much better for the entire ecosystem, in my biased opinion.”
So what’s special about the Rio Grande Chirping Frog besides its unusual call? This fun/weird fact is offered by biologist and frequent Master Naturalist educator Carlos Hinojos: Unlike other frogs, the RGCF does not have a tadpole stage; the eggs hatch directly into small frogs. “Their evolutionary history has decoupled their life cycle from water sources so that they no longer go through a full metamorphosis and instead undergo direct development.”
This also explains, in part, how they’ve spread across Texas. The frogs prefer warm, moist soil for their eggs, a soil much like those found in greenhouse plants. Explains Hinojos, “As these plants were sold and transported to various areas across the southeast U.S., the eggs and froglets joined.”
East Dallas neighbor and Master Naturalist Whitney Wolf first became aware of the RGCF several years ago. “I started hearing chirping at night when we took the dogs walking around the neighborhood. The chirping has always sounded like sleepy birds to me. As a long-time birder, I knew that was unlikely,” she remembers. She conducted a bit of detective work and found recordings
of a frog with an identical call, but every range map in field guides didn’t show them in North Texas.
She was on a quest, she admits, to find the tiny and elusive RGCF. “I annoyed everyone I knew,” she laughs, “with stories about the RGCF and playing its call for them.”
Sometime later, Wolf attended a master naturalist meeting in Corpus Christi, where one of the training sessions was about frogs. She learned that the Rio Grande Chirping Frog had extended its range into North Texas but published field guides hadn’t caught up yet.
It was at this conference that she finally glimpsed the frog. “They were having a mothing event (i.e. — attracting, observing, photographing, identifying and documenting moths, according to the National Moth Week website) led by Kieschnick. And they found a Rio Grande Chirping Frog. It’s the only one I’ve ever actually seen.”
Wolf is glad to help clear up the mystery. “Any number of my friends and neighbors have asked me about the ‘bird chirping at night.’ They’re surprised to learn it’s a tiny frog making that peeping noise. RGCFs have been living in my yard for years and even survived Icemageddon.”
Kieschnick is another who happily coexists with the little frogs. “I think they’re just another critter that has adapted to the urban ecosystem to live amongst us — they’re using our habitats to thrive as they eat little tiny bugs. I definitely welcome them in my yard!”
PATTI VINSON is a guest writer who has lived in East Dallas for more than 20 years. She’s written for the Advocate and Real Simple magazine.
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