As a yolky sun sinks into the inky depths of dusk, a handful of neighbors on a Far North Dallas street chat and sip iced tea. Among them sits Malorie Pieper. She’s a gingery young woman, beaming as she talks and playfully toying with her long hair.
Yet Pieper’s youthful demeanor belie her past. While most other college kids spend their summers working a lightweight gig, Pieper has been dealing with heavier issues.
In May, Pieper’s mother, Joanie, was in a serious car accident at the intersection of Coit and La Manga.
“It was a side impact, which doctors say is the worst,” Pieper says. She sustained serious injuries to her neck and back, and although she was conscious, witnesses say she was babbling and visibly dazed prior to being rushed to Parkland Hospital.
“An off-duty paramedic who lives in the neighborhood heard the crash from his house, and he ran to the scene to help my mom,” Pieper says. “He was able to keep her airway open until the ambulance arrived, and if it hadn’t been for him, she probably would’ve died. It was an absolute blessing that a neighbor stepped in to save her.”
Though she survived the crash, Pieper’s mother has been in a coma for several months now.
“The doctors are not sure if, or when, she will wake up,” Pieper says. Her voice is strong, but she’s clearly pained to talk about it.
“They also don’t know how much damage has been done to her brain, but it’s possible that she has lost her memory and personality. The doctors won’t be able to tell how severe the brain damage is until she wakes up, so we’re just waiting it out — and that could take months, maybe years. Waiting in suspense like this is the hard part.”
Unfortunately, Pieper isn’t any stranger to hardship.
Her father died from a heart attack when she was 8, leaving her mother to raise two young girls. To make ends meet, Pieper’s mother worked three jobs, eventually earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees so she could teach special-needs children. Through it all, Pieper says her mother somehow maintained a tireless drive and an endless grace.
“I look back, and I really don’t know how my mom made it,” she says. “My mom became a single parent overnight, but somehow she managed to go to college, work three jobs and raise two kids — all by herself.
“She never wanted us to feel disadvantaged just because we had a widowed mother, so she made sure we played all the sports and had all the music lessons, just like all the other kids. She worked to give us the best childhood she could, and she was just a very, very strong-willed woman.”
Pieper says like her mother, she’s trying to stay strong through this ordeal, both for herself and her younger sister. But aside from the emotional toll, there are still bills that must be paid and a home to be maintained — adult duties that can feel insurmountable for a 20-year-old such as Pieper.
That’s why neighbor and family friend Jill East stepped in to ask the Far North Dallas community for help.
“It all started with one simple e-mail,” East says. “When I heard what happened, I sent out a mass e-mail out to the entire J.J. Pearce community, and it’s been a ripple effect from there. People are coming out of the woodwork in this community to help.”
That help has come in the form of hot dinners dropped off almost nightly, gift cards for groceries, and even a neighborhood spare change drive, appropriately called “Spare Change for Malorie.”
“These young girls have been thrown into a very adult world and asked to make some decisions that no one ever wants to make, so this is our community’s way of supporting them through that,” East says. “And as a parent, I would want the community to step in and help my kids if they needed it. After seeing the response, I know that if, God forbid, anything were to happen to me, our neighbors would step in and help my family, and there’s a certain comfort in that.”
Pieper looks at her Far North Dallas community differently now.
“I grew up here, and I graduated from J.J. Pearce, so I always knew this was a great neighborhood. But I never knew the people here cared this much or would ever want to help this much,” she says.
“And what has surprised me most is that the people here don’t feel obligated to help, and they don’t feel like it’s a burden to help — they actually want to help, they want to be there, and that makes me feel good.”
This fall, Pieper will return to the University of Texas-Austin to continue her studies, and although she feels conflicted about leaving her mother and little sister, she knows it’s what her mother would want.
“My mom would be furious if I put my education on hold,” she says. “I know my mom would want me to continue with my life goals, so I’m going to do my best to do that. And originally, after I graduated, I was going to move out of state, but things like this tend to rearrange your life.
“Now I want to move back here and be close to my mom. And besides, after seeing how much this neighborhood cares, I’m thinking it’s not such a bad place to end up. It’s not every day you find such a tight-knit neighborhood in the middle of a big city like this.
“This neighborhood is a special place, and I can say that knowing firsthand.”
ONLINE UPDATES/ Malorie Pieper keeps an online journal of her mother’s progress. If you’d like to follow the Pieper family journey, you can do so by creating a free profile at carepages.com, then entering the Pieper family page name: StrongJoanie (no space).
TO HELP/ The Scheurer family in Far North Dallas owns Signature Bank at 6757 Arapaho and has established the Joanie Pieper Fund. To donate to the fund, stop by the bank between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays. To find out more, call the bank at 972.866.9696 or e-mail Hugh Scheurer at hscheurer@signaturebankdallas.com.
