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LAKE HIGHLANDS ADVOCATE VOL. 32 NO. 7
PROFILE
10 AG Design
DINING
14 Marie’s kitchen
FEATURES 8 LHWL
18 Women at the forefront
24 Heart House: not going anywhere
28 Graduating with a bang
Angeline Guido Hall’s design skills translate to her office decor. Read more about her work on page 10. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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Mural in the children’s area of the Dallas Library at Audelia Road Branch. Art by Brad Pippin. Photography by Lauren Allen.
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EVOLVING TRADITION
The Lake Highlands Women’s League is staying true to its roots while evolving
Story by AUSTIN WOOD
Photography by YUVIE STYLES
THE LAKE HIGHLANDS WOMEN’S LEAGUE may be one of our community’s most and established pillars, but the organization is by no means static.
Founded in 1969, the group of 100 active members and 200 sustainers engages in various volunteer and philanthropic activities around Lake Highlands, including the popular Holiday in the Highlands Home Tour. While it maintains its original mission of supporting various civic and educational initiatives in the neighborhood, LHWL has evolved in recent years to reflect the changing lives of Lake Highlands women.
The membership form asks prospective members what they do for a living. In the past, that question centered around husbands’ occupations. It’s fitting, especially considering around 80% of members work these days, up from around 50% when outgoing President Heather Marburger joined close to a decade ago.
“One of the things we’ve done is really look at how we do our committees. They don’t always have to be day meetings. Zoom has helped,” Marburger says. “If you’re on a really, really packed committee, and instead of always meeting face-to-face, you can fit a few in there.”
In addition to providing more flexibility for committee meetings, LHWL has also created nighttime meeting opportunities for all members to meet their membership requirements. It’s helpful for members like Marburger, who works for AT&T’s corporate office.
She says the makeup of the league’s membership has also changed in recent years.
“I do believe there was a time where there was probably an age group, and their kids were a certain age, and now we’re all over the place, and it brings a lot of good perspective,” she says.
New perspectives have brought changes to various LHWL initiatives, including the home tour, which is the league’s biggest fundraiser. In the past, the Friday morning before the tour was reserved for a kickoff luncheon.
In place of the luncheon, which was time-consuming and required many members to volunteer, the league launched its Sip and Shop
three years ago. The event invites neighbors to the KayCee Club for an afternoon of browsing local vendor stands accompanied by sparkling wine. For Home Tour ticket holders, the first glass is free.
Changes have also been made to the league’s scholarship program, a foundational aspect of its mission. LHWL traditionally disbursed scholarships to 60 graduating Lake Highlands High School seniors, but this year, the organization consolidated the awards to create higher-impact scholarships for 40 seniors.
Recently, the league amended its bylaws to allow for 115 active members, up from the 100 originally mandated. Incoming President Dee Ann Baggett, whose sister and mother-in-law are both also LHWL members, says that membership will rise incrementally, with a total of 105 active members expected for the fall.
“I want to make sure that these 19 or 20 new ladies that are coming on board, that they feel welcome, that they are able to connect and seek guidance from mentorships or their sponsor,” Baggett says. “So I want to make sure we’re successful with the new members, because I think they’ll stay on longer if they can get in that first year and feel like they’re connected.”
Social activities available to LHWL members include book clubs, movie groups and dinner groups, among other activity-specific subgroups. The league also organizes cultural excursions to Dallas landmarks like the Dallas Museum of Art and the George W. Bush Presidential Museum, in addition to a yearly destination trip (including Nashville, Puerto Rico and Santa Barbara in previous years).
While plenty of things have changed for the league in recent years, plenty more has remained the same. The Home Tour welcomes hundreds of visitors each year, thousands of dollars of scholarships are awarded to graduating seniors and Women’s League volunteers still drop off $10,000+ checks at local elementary schools.
“It’s great that we have evolved, but we’ve held on to those core values that we have,” Baggett says. “We don’t want to make it something it’s not either ... We still have the same goals every year.”
DESIGNING A BRAND
Angeline Guido Hall is a Lake Highlands native with an award-winning design firm
Story by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by LAUREN ALLEN
Angeline Guido Hall is a Lake Highlands native whose parents erect homes throughout the neighborhood. Since then, she’s followed their footsteps and built an award-winning brand of her own.
Her company, Angeline Guido Design, has been recognized as a top studio by Architectural Digest . She’s worked with clients in Lake Highlands, in addition to projects in Washington, D.C., Maryland and New York. Residential design is the studio’s bread and butter, but AGD also designs hospitality concepts like Smokey Rose, hotels and office spaces.
She watched as her parents built the white stucco houses on Green Oaks Drive between Royal Lane and Whitehurst Drive on Greenville Avenue. Guido was a homecoming queen at Lake Highlands High School. She also participated in student council, cheer and track.
At graduation, she already knew design and building was her calling. Her father gave her two options: either he would pay for college or help her start her own design business. Guido chose the former, attending Texas Christian University’s design school.
She first entered the field as a design assistant at at hospitality-focused Looney & Associates’ Dallas office, where she worked primarily with hotel design. The economic downturn in 2008 caused Guido to leave the firm. She eventually found work as a designer for Sambuca Restaurant Group before moving to her last corporate gig at M Crowd Hospitality.
In 2014, after a few years moonlighting residential design on the side, Guido struck out on her own to launch Angeline Guido Designs. She has 11 designers and business managers on her team, and isn’t shy about giving them credit. In fact, AGD will soon undergo a rebrand to reflect the collaborative spirit its principal designer proudly touts.
These days, Guido lives in Heath, a small encalve on the edge of of Lake Ray Hubbard, with her husband and two children. They spend their time attending youth sports events, relaxing with friends and posting Instagram reels to
the AGD Instagram account. Appearances by her father, Carmen, have become a fan favorite. We caught up with Guido to talk about growing up in Lake Highlands, her career, design and the future of her firm.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE GROWING UP IN LAKE HIGHLANDS?
There are so many things I love about Lake Highlands. It’s like this small community within the city, where it’s such a great location, and there’s all these great little pockets of neighborhoods. Lake Highlands is just such a proud town, they’re just proud of their school and their Wildcats. Everybody is so involved in the community. I remember I was a cheerleader, any time that we did parades or anything like that, there was always a huge turnout. There’s a lot of Lake Highlands pride in Lake Highlands.
DID YOU ALWAYS KNOW YOU WANTED TO FOLLOW YOUR PARENTS INTO THE BUSINESS?
I just never wanted to do anything else. I grew up on the job site and showroom. So when my parents were building together, my mom ran a lot of the site operations and client communication. My dad really focused on a lot of the early architectural stuff and the budgets. I was with my mom a lot, so I was always on the job site with her meeting with subcontractors, she would put me in my little pink bicycle helmet. I would draw the slaps while she would meet with the electrician or whatever. It’s very familiar; the smell of sheet rock is something that is very nostalgic. When I go into a job site and it’s at the stage where they’re putting the sheetrock mud on, it brings me back to my childhood.
WHAT DID YOU ENJOY ABOUT DESIGNING RESTAURANTS?
You think about the connections that are made over meals. People utilize restaurants for so many things. It could be a baby shower. It could be an anniversary dinner. It could be
someone’s first date night that they’ve had together, and they end up getting married. All these very sentimental things happen within restaurants. That’s a very special thing to be a part of, that you’re creating this environment for people to make these memories, much like you do for a home. There’s a lot of these commonalities and common threads that run through my background in hospitality that I feel like I get to utilize and bring into the world of residential.
HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR CLIENTS TO FEEL AFTER COMPLETING A PROJECT?
I want them to say that it was fun. And yes, there may have been some stressful points because building a house or remodeling or whatever it might be, in general, is just stressful. There’s a lot of money involved. There’s a lot of decisions. I want them to look back and say that was money well spent, and I had a good time. And we’re very relaxed, and it’s a very lighthearted environment in my office. I want people to feel at home and that they are a friend because at the end of the day, I want to be able to want to go to dinner with every one of my clients at the end of a project, then I want to know that they feel the same way about me, and so whatever that takes to make them happy in the end is what we’re doing.
AS THE FIRM HAS GROWN, HOW HAVE YOU ENCOURAGED COLLABORATION?
As my business grows and as I’ve grown more into the principal designer role, it took some time, but I really had to allow myself to let go a little bit of some stuff in order for my team to have more ownership of projects. So I’m still involved in every project that comes through the doors of our office, unless it’s strictly just a furnishings project. I’m still very much involved in the design process, in formulating the direction of the design, setting up that client relationship, getting the client comfortable and making sure that I feel really good, that my team has a very good understanding of the direction of the design before we get
into the guts of actually putting the design together. So in those early concept phases is when I’m very involved, and then I have to allow myself to kind of step away a little bit during the design development and let them kind of do their thing.
WHAT PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR DESIGNS?
The common thread, no matter the style of the project, is that there’s always a very inviting, layered, livable look to all of our designs, whether it’s traditional and colorful or it is more modern and monochrome, there’s still these layers of texture and it looks comfortable, inviting and livable, and that’s how I want all of our projects to look.
YOUR DAD AND HUSBAND ARE FREQUENT FEATURES ON YOUR INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT. WILLING PARTICIPANTS?
My husband is more twist his arm. He doesn’t love to be plastered all over the internet, but he obliges. My dad, on the other hand, he’s a character. He is very aware that he has a lot of social media fans from my Instagram, and he loves it. He just had open heart surgery, and the amount of prayers that were coming in for him through my DMs, because I shared that he was having surgery, asking for prayers — I mean, it was amazing.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE FOR AGD?
I just want to stay on the same trajectory that we’re on. I don’t have any huge, big aspirations. I love where we’re at right now. I just want us to continue to just grow at the rate that we are. We’ve talked about the possibility of a staff member who’s like jonesing to move out to the Northeast, that might be something. We’re currently going through a total rebrand of the business right now, so that’s really exciting. We’re changing the name and also getting a new website, new logo. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s about the collaborative studio that I have. So we’re kind of rebranding a bit to lean into that a little bit more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
SILOG SUCCESS
Marie’s Kitchen is bringing Filipino cuisine to more and more people every day
Story by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by KATHY TRAN
In 2023, Jay Gherson and Candy Marie Ramos’ (at the time) relatively unknown eatery had fewer chairs and tables.
Tucked into a cozy, supply-packed 1,050 square-foot corner suite of a Greenville Avenue office tower, Marie’s Kitchen wasn’t exactly the talk of the town, although office workers in the building certainly knew about the hidden gem. Even then, Marie and Jay said they saw their mom-and-pop operation as a platform to elevate their native cuisine into the mainstream and introduce unfamiliar palates to Filipino food.
These days, things look a little different in suite #103 of Forest Green Office Park. Several tables have been added to account for increased foot traffic, and seats have been
placed near the entrance to accommodate overflow customers waiting to try silog or one of Marie’s daily specials. Some afternoons, there’s even a line out the door.
“We’ve been open for six years, and me and my husband were talking that we’re blessed that we got to six years, and then people are starting to recognize us,” Marie says. “So our hard work is paying off.”
She and Jay also have plenty of social media savvy, which likely contributed as much as anything to the spike in popularity. The Marie’s Kitchen’s Instagram account, which boasts over 3,000 followers, announces daily specials weekly and advertises the eatery’s now well-known selection of Filipino breakfast meals.
Candy Marie Ramos has watched her small cafe amass a loyal following. Photography by Jessica Turner.
Since March, Marie’s Kitchen has been tagged in quite a few food influencer Instagram reels advertising “authentic Filipino food” in a “hole-in-the-wall” setting. One reel, shared by local influencer Anisha Holla, amassed over 150,000 views and more than 100 comments. Past the exposure gained from their visits, Ramos says the influencers provide another vital service: guiding prospective customers through the kitchen’s hard-to-locate door.
“A lot of the influencers have been showing where to go,” she says. “This is not a regular place. It’s an office building, but they’re showing them exactly how to go through that door on the side.”
Marie’s Kitchen is also now open on Sundays. While café sandwiches are only available during the week, silog, Filipino lunch specials and breakfast options like ube pancakes drizzled with purple sauce are all available during the weekend.
Ramos says it’s become one of their busiest days.
“There’s a lot of people that want to try us because our hours are odd,” Ramos says. “They’re banking hours, so the people that can’t come during that time, they come on Sunday. And then we opened up on the holiday, Memorial Day, and then a lot of people came then, too, because they’re not working that day. People have a chance, because they’re curious.”
Most of the new customers are also Filipino cuisine first-timers, she says.
“We have to explain to them how to eat the food, and at first, they’re like, ‘Oh, rice for breakfast. Kind of odd.’ But it’s normal for us,” she says. “For some reason, a lot of people, mostly non-Filipino, eat silog now, and that’s what we want. We talked last time how we wanted it to become mainstream. So for some reason the Texan palette is accepting the silog.” Silog, a typical Filipino breakfast
plate of a protein like lechon kawali (fried pork belly) or tapa (steak), garlic fried rice and a fried egg, is still the café’s No. 1 seller. Daily specials have become increasingly popular, however.
For the specials, Marie prepares dishes representing various regional cuisines from the Philippines, a highly diverse archipelago of over 7,000 islands. Some, like humbà, a spiced dish of slow-braised pork, hail from her native Visaya, while others invite those from Manilla and other regions to taste a bite of home.
“We do our island version and then some other islands, too, so at least people can see and if they’re from the island, they can come in and support us and try it because they miss it,” Ramos says.
One of the most popular returning specials is kare kare, a rich curry of oxtails, peanut sauce and grilled vegetables. Marie and Jay have also begun making siopao, a steamed barbecue pork bun derived from baozi, to accompany the specials.
Sandwiches are available Monday-Friday, with the most popular being the turkey club, served with house-made chipotle mayo. The “American” food is mostly for workers in the office building, who have since rearranged their schedules as the café becomes more popular, Marie says.
The café is still a true mom-andpop, with Jay and Marie as the only full-time employees.
Ramos says seeing her business grow has been extremely rewarding and that it could potentially expand in a significant way in the future.
“Me and my husband are really happy that we’re at least getting traction and things. Our brand is building up,” she says. “Since our brand is solid now, maybe eventually, when things get better, we can come out here and do an actual brick and mortar.”
Marie’s Kitchen, 11910 Greenville Ave. #103, 972.234.8383
Silog combines garlic rice, a protein and two fried eggs to create a Filipino breakfast plate.
the fore front
Lake Highlands women making a difference in our neighborhood
Stories by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by ETHAN GOOD
The people’svet
Veterinarian Molly Deason may work with small animals, but her favorite part of the job enters her practice on two legs, not four.
As one of two veterinarians at the nonprofit CHEW Animal Clinic, she provides low and nocost medical services for pets of lower-income clients. Deason has practiced for 27 years, but only recently joined the clinic in 2021, a few months after its launch.
CHEW is a full-service animal clinic, providing surgeries, orthopedic wellness and checkup appointments. To date, the clinic has performed more than 4,000 surgeries. The clinic utilizes private donations to help clients bridge the gap between what they can afford and the treatment their pets need.
“Being in a private practice, I didn’t see the cases that couldn’t afford to come in, if/when they call and they don’t have the money for even the exam fee, you don’t see them,” she says.
Working at the nonprofit has given her a chance to reach owners who would otherwise have limited options for care.
“There’s some people that say, ‘Owning an animal is a right, not a privilege.’ That’s hard for me to swallow, because I see clients, elderly clients, ex-military, they’re by themselves; they have no family, no friends, no support system,” she says. “And this animal is all they’ve got and the only thing they care for.”
An emphasis on the people goes back to her childhood. Originally from Albuquerque, Deason moved to a farm outside of Tyler in elementary school. In her teenage years, she and her father would travel to compete in rodeos around the state.
Even then, surrounded by prancing quarter horses and ill-tempered bulls, it was the people who stood out to her.
“It was the people that were around animals,” she says. “Like every parent was so supportive and interested in seeing everyone excel, no matter what you did. It was a community.”
Unlike many future vets, Deason didn’t know her calling in kindergarten. That came during her freshman year at Texas A&M, when her equine veterinarian called offering a summertime job while his full-time assistant recovered from a car wreck. She worked in both equine and small animal medicine while in graduate school, but eventually chose to pursue the latter for her career.
After graduating, she worked at a small clinic in Plano for a few years before eventually landing at East Lake Veterinary Hospital, where she would go on to stay for two decades.
“There were six doctors almost every day,” she says. “And so the mentorship there was amazing, from what I learned from the doctors that I worked with to be able to just say ‘Hey, someone
missed an X-ray.’ ‘Hey, I need help with surgery.’ ‘Hey, I might have trouble with this tooth.’ There was always someone there.”
However, when an offer to work at CHEW came along, she wasn’t exactly a tough sell.
“I told Lee this, he’s the director there,” she says. “I feel like everything I had done in my career led me up to that moment. There’s no way I could do it as a new graduate, because you have to be very creative with what finances people have, and sometimes it’s very little. So if I have to pick one test, what test is that going to be to give us as much information as we can to try to improve quality of life?”
When a client is unable to pay for needed treatment, including surgery, CHEW’s compassion fund fully or partially covers the cost of care. Compassion fund cases are some of the most rewarding for Deason, she says.
“The best part of the day is that, especially in emergency or urgent situations where the pet is sick, if the client doesn’t have the money, we have the compassion fund that locally our fundraisers and the dog walk and donors keep full just enough,” she says. “We have clients, they have to fill out financial forms so we understand that they truly don’t have the money. So I’m not having to euthanize animals for body surgery because they don’t have the money that day.”
Not all cases have such a happy ending, however.
After 27 years in practice, surprisingly, she says euthanizations have only gotten harder. Despite this, she still counts those difficult moments as one of the most rewarding parts of her job.
“Not every day is a great day, and some days are really sad, but again, it’s about the connections that you made that day,” she says. “And even if we had to say goodbye to a patient, you hope that you gave that owner peace and something that they can carry for the rest of their life, and be thankful that maybe that moment ended like it did.”
Deason says that she plans to retire at CHEW, as she could not return to a private practice knowing the need for reduced and no-cost veterinary care. The nonprofit is currently in the middle of a capital campaign to renovate its clinic close to the intersection of Walnut Hill Lane and Greenville Avenue.
Outside of work, she is married and has three children, two of whom are currently attending college. The family enjoys quality time together and traveling, especially to Wyoming. She is also a member of the 100 Women of Lake Highlands. When asked if she could see herself in any other profession, Deason’s answer is clear as day.
“I can’t even answer it. I really can’t. I am so blessed to not only have found want I want to do, but continue to want to do, and I’m still so passionate about it.”
Hamilton Park’s own in the Horseshoe
“I’ve got RISD running through my veins,” says Regina Harris, Richardson ISD Place 4 Trustee.
She’s probably right, especially considering she’s held every officer position on the school board, sent her son to district schools and served on PTAs of every level. Harris also grew up in Hamilton Park, was a member of one of the first integrated graduating classes at Hamilton Park Elementary and graduated from Richardson High School.
That’s about as RISD as it comes.
Education in general has been a common thread throughout her life. She comes from a family of educators. Her grandmother taught in Baton Rouge and an uncle coached football at Grambling State, among numerous other cousins and aunts. While her mother may not have been a teacher, she was the “classroom mom” and a fixture of PTA meetings.
“I’ve always wanted to do something with education,” she says. “The one thing I did not want to do is be in a classroom … but I wanted to make a difference in children’s lives.”
After high school, she attended Grambling State and graduated with a degree in public relations. Her professional career includes stops at Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut, where she first managed a call center before moving into human resources, her current field.
While moving up the corporate ladder, she raised her son, Brian, who also attended Hamilton Park. As he progressed through junior high and high school, Harris remained heavily involved, just as her mother had done for her.
“That was absolutely me all the way to today. I backed my son. I’m there for him,” she says. “I’m very visible. I was such a fixture in the PTA that when he saw me walking down the hall, he was just like, ‘Hey, Mom.’ Nothing crazy. It was just typical and usual to see me walk through the halls of West Junior High or Richardson High School or Hamilton Park because it’s just what I did.”
A PTA president at West Junior High and Richardson, she eventually joined the RISD Council of PTAs, where she served as vice president.
Despite her involvement, she didn’t even know what the board of trustees was until a rainy day waiting for her son.
“He was at West Junior High. It was raining outside,” Harris says. “I was sitting in my car waiting for him to come out of band, and a good friend of mine came over to my car, and she’s standing in the rain outside of my car, and she’s going, ‘You should run for board of trustees.’ And I was like, ‘What is that?’”
Initially hesitant to run for the volunteer position due to its net salary of $0.0, she decided to dive in after she began to understand she could make a deeper impact in her community at the board level. Harris went on to defeat three challengers for the newly created Single Member Place 4 seat with close to 52% of the vote.
Her election to the board came at a difficult time.
Superintendent Jeannie Stone resigned in 2021 after months of tumult and rancor, a departure which Harris says affected her greatly, especially considering she had worked with Stone as board president following the departure of Board President Karen Clardy in 2020. It may seem like the distant past, but those were the days of packed board meetings and vicious attacks from public commenters.
“I just kept thinking, ‘I’ve got to keep calm, and I’ve got to follow this script, and I’ve got to facilitate this meeting and facilitate it with pride, knowing that what we’re doing and the decisions that we’re making have been well thought through, and we are keeping our kids and our staff number one as these decisions are being made,’” she says. “And regardless of what these public commenters come up and say and thrash us, know that they don’t know the whole story.”
Harris and the district are still facing significant challenges. Legislation at the state level has created uncertainty for districts across Texas, and RISD has passed multiple consecutive deficit budgets fueled by declining enrollment. Funding shortfalls have forced the district to make difficult decisions, including school closures as part of Project RightSize. One of the schools closed in 2024 was Thurgood Marshall Elementary in Place 4, a closure which Harris says “hurt.”
“There’s several things that we promised we would do to try to right size our budget, and we’ve only done a handful of them” she says. “And so I think that’s what a lot of people have to understand as well, is it wasn’t just about closing those four schools. There’s a whole lot of work that needs to be done.”
Despite the challenges, she says she is especially proud of her role as president in navigating the pandemic and the search process for a new superintendent. She stepped down from the position in 2024 and has since served as the district’s Texas Association of School Boards representative, in addition to being a member of the Texas State Caucus of Black School Board Members.
Harris was recently sworn into a third term after running unopposed for the second consecutive election. She says she will likely remain a fixture of the horseshoe for the immediate future, but believes new perspectives are important on the board.
“I think that just giving someone else an opportunity,” she says. “I would love to help someone who’s interested in this seat understand what it all involves and mentor them so that they can run a good race.”
How shouldhospitality look
Goldie’s general manager and partner Brittni Clayton knew exactly what hospitality should look like at an early age.
Growing up in Plano, she frequented restaurants with her gourmand grandparents. They both had demanding careers, so cooking wasn’t exactly a welcome labor at the end of the day.
Eventually, Clayton became aware of the attention to detail and emphasis placed on quality service at the restaurants they would visit.
“I went to dinner with them one night, and we walked into the bar area where they typically sat. When we sat down, before saying anything to anyone, they brought over my grandparents’ drinks,” Clayton says. “And I just remember thinking to myself, ‘Whoa. What is happening here?’ They’re getting the VIP drink. And the more time I spent with them, the more I realized that every place they went to was like that. And I was just kind of enamored by the experience and how well they were taken care of.”
The connection was instant — she knew then owning her own restaurant would be a guiding ambition of her life. Getting there, however, took some time.
After working teenage jobs at Plano pizza parlors, Clayton headed off to Colin College’s hospitality school to further her long-determined career path. She tended bar and waited tables at various concepts while at school, including Nick Badovinus’s Neighborhood Services, where she met Lake Highlands neighbor Jeff Bekavac and general manager Jason Morgan. The latter lit a spark in her, she says.
“It really wasn’t until I met him that I started realizing, ‘OK, I need to start transitioning into the next step, which would be managing.’ And then from there, started GMing all over the city and quickly realized that owning your own restaurant is a really big deal, and it takes more than just managing to be able to do that,” she says. “And so I just made relationships with people, anyone that I could meet to talk to about my vision and my dream and what I wanted to do.”
She’s built her career on those relationships. Her relationship with Julian Barsotti took her to work at Nonna and Fuchini after leaving Flavor Hook. There, she says she was given the freedom and latitude to “manage how I wanted to manage.”
Her management style? Positive, even when tickets start piling up at the expo station.
“Even if I’m pissed, like, happy. Negativity spreads like cancer. So I try to be as positive and silver lining as possible,” Clayton says. “Obviously,
everybody has their moments where we’re in the shit and trenches.”
Her last stop before Goldie’s was Duro Hospitality, where she opened acclaimed restaurants like Sister on Greenville Avenue. That’s where she met her now-business partner Brandon Hayes. While still in the early stages of opening the neighborhood restaurant, Hayes asked if she was looking for a job. Clayton thought she was interviewing for a general manager position but was pleasantly surprised to learn the offer also involved a partnership. The dream had been realized.
She’s now opened 15 restaurants, including Goldie’s. No. 15 held a little more significance than the others, she says.
“It kind of felt like The Twilight Zone when things start to fall in place that you’ve been wanting for so long, it’s just surreal,” she says.
At Goldie’s, Clayton manages the bar and front-of-house operations, with Matthew Perry, another Neighborhood Services alumnus, overseeing the kitchen.
Service at Goldie’s measures itself against Clayton’s high standards. Small details are emphasized. Names are remembered. Drink orders are memorized. And when a mistake happens, accountability is crucial, she says.
“The biggest thing is, what happens when you drop the ball? How do you pick it back up? How do you make something right that went wrong? And I think that humility is a really big thing,” she says. “Just saying you’re sorry when shit happens, I think a lot of places you go don’t take responsibility for things.”
Her vigilance seems to be paying off, with more than 30 Yelp reviews, all positive, mentioning service.
Clayton says she would eventually like to open another restaurant in the Lake Highlands area and that a sandwich shop could very likely be her next project. That won’t be for a while, however, as opening No. 15 required some recovery, she says.
In the meantime, she will continue to strive to recreate those dinners with her grandparents for Goldie’s guests.
“My childhood was so great. And I just want people to feel that when they’re at Goldies. The whole menu consists of things that me and my partners love, whether it’s a restaurant in Hawaii or a dish that we’ve had here a million times, but just putting our flair on it. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re not trying to be this Michelin star rated restaurant. We just want to provide tasty food, delicious cocktails, and a good experience and a fun environment.”
HEART OF VICKERY
Heart House provides literacy education and supports emotional well-being for children in Vickery Meadow
Story by AUSTIN WOOD | Photography by VICTORIA GOMEZ
Midtown Improvement District. Five Points. Little UN.
Through landlord neglect, systemic failures, high crime, beautification efforts and recent gentrification: Vickery Meadow.
It’s one of the most densely populated areas of the city, spanning a few square miles of apartment complexes built on apartment complexes. Originally built for early-career single professionals, the apartments now house one of the most diverse and robust populations of immigrants, refugees and working class people in Dallas.
According to 2022 census survey data, close to 48% percent of the population in ZIP code 75231 spoke languages other than English at home, and almost a third were born outside of the U.S.
Currently in its 25th year of service in the area, Heart House is a nonprofit organization that provides free literacy programs for refugee, immigrant and under-resourced children in Vickery Meadow. The organization recently expanded its operations outside of after-school
education to include an in-school tutoring program at Lee A. McShan Jr. Elementary School called McShan Reading Homeroom.
“Many of the children who come to Dallas or families who come to Dallas as refugees are settled into the Vickery Meadow community by the resettlement agencies,” says Executive Director Shannon Hendricks. “And so in those three square miles, we have just numerous, numerous refugee children and immigrant families who have found their way to that community as well.”
“We’ve historically served them after school, with what started off as a safe place for them to go so they’re not just home alone or in the neighborhood on the streets. They helped with homework and things like that. Now it’s transitioned to be a place where we help them develop their literacy skills, their English language learning.”
At first, Heart House operated in neighborhood apartment complexes, but was forced to abandon the model in 2021 due to permitting issues. Since then, they’ve provided programs at libraries, Literacy Archive’s Vickery Meadow
Center and the Vickery Meadow Youth Development Foundation facility, before landing at McShan earlier last year.
Working with refugee and immigrant children in schools requires a certain level of sensitivity and finesse in the current climate. In January, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a 2011 directive prohibiting federal enforcement actions in “safe zones” such as elementary and secondary schools, colleges, hospitals and churches.
“(Parents were worried) especially in late January, February, March, when parents didn’t know if their kids were safe at school because of the directive that ICE could come into the schools, which had been a safe place before,” Hendricks says. “We worked with the schools to understand the processes and the protocols and what would garner ICE coming into a school campus, and served as a conduit to sharing that information with the families, reassuring the families that their information was safe with us, because we are not a government funded entity.”
Hendricks says things have settled down
since the winter, but the organization is still monitoring changes to federal programs, especially AmeriCorps.
TEACHING THE HEART
The core of Heart House’s mission may be English language education, but it also pursues a more holistic model in reaching its students.
“Heart House provides opportunities to increase a child’s awareness of literacy and English language learning, coupled with development of their social emotional skills, their mental well-being,” Hendricks says.
The organization incorporates breathing exercises, story times and other exercises designed to help children understand, label and process their emotions into most sessions. Past processing their own emotions, Heart House incorporates social-emotional learning (SEL) to help the children learn empathy and healthy interaction.
Serving immigrant and, especially, refugee children can come with its own host of challenges, Hendricks says.
“We know that these kids have been through a lot of traumas, a lot of changes, more so than your typical child, which mental health is important for everybody,” she says. “So we do specific things that help them to really understand their emotions and be able to speak about their emotions.”
is a slightly different crowd. They have yet to enjoy the privilege of second recess. While things are a little rowdy, the children are still filling out worksheets, practicing consonants and working on long Os.
They say after-school is better than regular school, with a few citing better activities as the deciding factor. (A substance called slime, apparently blue, was referenced as one’s favorite activity.)
Teaching them is Camryn Woodson. She earned a degree in human development and family science from the University of North Texas. Before Heart House, she assistant taught at an area elementary school.
“I was always looking for something that
Woodson is one of eight full-time staff members at the organization. Staffers are largely supported by volunteers, who come to fulfill work or school service obligations, or simply for the sake of a good deed.
Hendricks says volunteers of all skills and availabilities are able to serve at Heart House’s programs.
“They can come to our after-school program, they can share a skill or a talent that they have,” Hendricks says. “They can just come and hang out with the kids and just be a positive influence. We have one volunteer who has a therapy dog, and he brings Bunny in once a month to be with the kids, and the dog is trained to be that calming presence. We have individuals who know how to do yoga, and they’ll come in and teach yoga to the kids as a good method.”
The emphasis on SEL isn’t just about making children happier, Hendricks says. It’s about creating well-rounded members of society who are better equipped to deal with the pressures and adversities of life. She says that the in-school tutoring program will provide one-on-one opportunities to further this mission.
THE CLASSROOM
It’s around 4 p.m. on a gray November afternoon at McShan Elementary. Through bright construction paper-wrapped hallways, the lower elementary after-school group is being led in breathing exercises inside a quaint, equally construction paper-adorned classroom. The children are calm, probably because they just enjoyed their second recess of the day. Downstairs, the upper elementary group
was SEL-based, because in the school, I noticed there wasn’t that at all, and the kids really needed a social emotional [supporter] to help them,” Woodson says. “And that’s why I gravitated toward Heart House.”
She started in the spring, and says things have been going a little better in her new classroom.
“I really feel like I’m making a difference with kids, and I’ve seen kids grow,” she says. “So the kids that I had at another location we were at when I came in April, I got to see how they developed.”
“There was this little girl who never really talked about her emotions or how she was feeling at all, and then by the end, she would open up to me more, and she was able to label her emotions and her feelings.”
CHRISTELLE
Originally from Rwanda, Christelle Agasaro grew up in Malawi before coming to the U.S. with her two sons three years ago After she arrived, like many in Vickery Meadow, she says she was challenged by finding a job, helping her kids with homework and adapting to an entirely different country
She saw a flier for Heart House, and enrolled her boys as fast as she could She says one of the most immediate effects she noticed was in her eldest son, who had been experiencing social isolation.
“He would be in the apartment, and he would just be staying indoors,” Agasaro says. “He wasn’t making any friends, he was getting bored. He was a sad kid, but after he joined Heart House. He would come home happy, smiling, and I just had that positive energy. It was more like they were bringing positivity in my life. Because even for me, things were just a bit hectic. But for him, he started making friends. He was happy. He was always excited to go. And then came in the reading.”
She had enjoyed the benefit of English classes at her Catholic school in Malawi — her sons had not. When they first arrived, she
Inspired Living in Red, White, and Blue!
says both of her children had difficulty reading, but quickly caught on after lessons at Heart House.
Agasaro says she is very involved in the community, rarely missing events, which is why Heart House eventually offered her a job as the organization’s community development director last February.
In her role, Agasaro coordinates with volunteers and communicates with families. She helps get resources, program information and updates to the children’s parents, who may feel more comfortable with her.
“I would say it is very much helpful, just because where we come from. We have a certain perspective of things where, if it’s someone who is in your situation, you feel like you open up more to them and you trust more of them,” she says.
Her oldest son is in middle school now and has aged out of the program, but her younger son, Brave, is now in the upper elementary class. Sitting in a McShan Elementary hallway, Agasaro is approachable, friendly and enthusiastic about Heart House’s mission — the archetype of a nonprofit community outreach coordinator in one of the five biggest metropolitan areas in the U.S.
“I believe in this mission, mostly because it has that perspective of taking care of the kids, other than just families, and I believe it’s a necessity for the kids to be supported in that emotional support and that reading part.”
NOT GOING ANYWHERE
Heart House teachers are supported by AmeriCorps volunteers. It’s an area of concern for the organization, as the Trump Administration recently laid off over 1,000 AmeriCorps employees and slashed funding for thousands of programs. However, a federal district judge ordered the administration to restore AmeriCorps funding in early June, and Hendricks says the agencies which administer Heart House’s volunteer funding have been unaffected.
Despite the temporary reprieve, AmeriCorps still faces an uncertain future, and Hendricks says the organization would be forced to hire part-time staff to compensate for any potential loss of volunteers. Cuts to USDA food programs are also a concern, as the organization relies on the funds to provide after school snacks, she says.
Regardless of potential challenges and cuts facing the organization ahead of the upcoming school year, Hendricks says the need remains the same.
“These children are here, regardless of how they got here. They’re here and they are human lives, and we can help them now by repairing some of those pathways in their brain that have been damaged by the traumas that they’ve encountered in their lives. We can help them build their literacy skills, help their learning, help them learn coping mechanisms so they can become productive members of society, wherever they are. Or we can ignore that and put blame on their situation, not help them, not repair the damages that they’ve encountered so far, and they can become taxing members of society — the
is ours.”
‘WE CANNOT STAY SILENT’
Nobody expected Lake Highlands High School’s 2021 commencement ceremony to draw nationwide attention.
Including Valedictorian Paxton Smith.
After Gov. Greg Abbott signed Texas’ “Heartbeat Bill,” which prohibits most abortions after six weeks without exceptions for rape and incest, into law a few weeks before the graduation ceremony, Smith felt betrayed and disappointed as the news broke on social media.
She had originally intended to give a speech on youth and media — a speech approved by the district. But in the days leading up to the ceremony, she decided to go off script and follow her own. Neighbors, school officials and even her friends had no idea what was coming.
On a muggy May evening at Wildcat-Ram Stadium, Smith approached the podium and thanked her math teacher. She revealed a folded piece of paper from underneath her honors cord-draped robe, took a deep breath, then delivered what would be RISD’s last live commencement speech.
“I have dreams and hopes and ambitions,” she said. “Every girl graduating today does. And we have spent our entire lives working toward our future, and without our input or consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I’m raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter.”
man both took to Twitter (now X) to show their support for Smith.
As a result of the viral speech, Paxton joined the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Projects’ board of directors. WRRAP is the largest nonprofit abortion fund in the U.S. and provides assistance to women seeking reproductive care across 50 states.
“There’s a lot of value to working toward shifting legislation, and I will never discount that. Legislation is what we live under, but WRRAP directly helps people on the ground who are experiencing the problem right now and need the help right now,” she says. “There is somebody in Texas right now who can’t afford an abortion but needs one, WRRAP can help them right then and there. And it feels really great to be part of an organization that can do that.”
Despite her continued advocacy, Smith says she doesn’t see a future in activism. Her mind is on music.
She recently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where she participated in Longhorn Singers and Texas Horizons. While attending UT, she gigged around Austin and interned in Los Angeles for Merlin Studios, Campus Studios and Interstate Records. In May, Smith released the first song from her debut EP, entitled “But I Love It.”
“The whole EP is about my coming of age,” she says. “I would say it’s characterized by contradiction by all these technical thoughts, by finding that growing up is more confusing than when I was younger.”
After making national news for her 2021 graduation speech, Paxton Smith is focusing her energy on music
Story by AUSTIN WOOD
by JESSICA TURNER
As she stepped away from the podium, district staff expressed their disapproval of her last-minute swap. One even mentioned withholding her diploma, although it turned out to be a hollow threat. In 2022, RISD moved to prerecorded commencement addresses.
The public’s response was overwhelmingly positive. A YouTube video of the speech drew hundreds of thousands of views within a week of its posting. CNN and The New York Times picked up the story. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and comedian Sarah Silver-
A little more than a year after her infamous speech, the United States Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. She may not see herself as an activist anymore, but she’s still staying vigilant and encouraging others to speak out.
“There are a lot of people working really hard to get these rights back and to make sure that people have access to abortion care,” Smith says. “There can always be more that can be done, but I am not critiquing people who are doing the work, just I’m applauding them, and I’m grateful for that, and I hope that more people will get involved.”
Photography
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THE GENERAC PWRCELL, a solar plus battery storage system. SAVE money, reduce your reliance on the grid, prepare for power outages and power your home. Full installation services
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
TUTOR/LESSONS
WANTED: OBOE TEACHER needed for 14 year old student. Call 214–235-7429
PIANO LESSONS 30 years exp. Also voice & composition. Text (469) 708-6151
A Next-Level Real Estate Experience
