FIERCE FEMALES

Every so often, we walk away from a conversation thinking: Wow! She’s beating the odds. She’s changing lives. She’s taking risks. How does she do it?

Stories by CAROL TOLER Photography by JESSICA TURNER, LIESBETH POWERS and JEHADU ABSHIRO Know a fierce female? Email us at editor@advocatemag.com.

when Maria Viera-Williams was a child in Massachusetts, her mother would make little dolls from chickpeas, napkins and toothpicks. Sitting in a circle on the living room floor with her twin sister and four other siblings, she listened to stories of her family’s life in Puerto Rico before Viera-Williams turned 5.

Today, she teaches reading and writing to English-language learners at Lake Highlands High School. Many are immigrants from distant countries fighting to acquire enough English to graduate and land jobs. Others aspire to earn advanced college degrees or serve in the military. Viera-Williams encourages each of them to value their culture and cherish their childhood memories.

“My father joined the army in Puerto Rico when I was 5,” Viera-Williams says. “I didn’t speak English, and my sister and I would listen to people talk and imitate their speech patterns and the way they moved their hands.”

She noticed that English speakers sometimes spit when they spoke, and the differences she observed between English and her native Spanish led her to acquire a master’s degree in linguistics.

“Right from the beginning, I wanted to be a teacher,” she says. “In the third grade I wanted to help other children in my class learn Spanish and English.”

Sometimes Viera-Williams’ family lived on Army bases where their dad was stationed, but often they lived in communities with immigrants from places like Greece, Italy, Russia, China, Japan and Cuba. She recalls parents coming to class to read legends from their countries, and she noticed every teacher who worked to make immigrant children feel welcome.

At LHHS, many international students credit Viera-Williams for inspiring them to maintain their native language and culture. She encourages them to wear native dress to school and to retain their early languages, which contain pathways to learning English. She also encourages students to fully integrate into campus life by participating in sports, clubs and extracurricular activities.

Viera-Williams serves on Richardson ISD’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and says that only about 30% of district students are white, while about 70% of faculty is white. At LHHS, about 500 of 3,000 students are English-language learners, hailing from 40 countries and speaking 73 languages.

Earlier this year, Viera-Williams was named International Educator of the Year by the National Junior World Affairs Council, and in April her LHHS chapter of JWAC earned the Most Active Chapter in DFW title for the third year in a row. As founder and senior co-sponsor, she’s brought dozens of speakers and programs to the students and helped them learn lessons about the big, wide world.

“The kids tell me coming to JWAC has made their minds become more plastic,” Viera-Williams says. “It stretches open to learn about other cultures and questions – questions they didn’t even know to ask. They’re painting with more colors than ever before.”

many white Americans say they’ve watched the video of Derek Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd’s neck dozens of times. Many Black citizens say more than a year later they’ve still never seen it. Denita Jones isn’t surprised.

“We’ve seen this kind of thing so many times, and a little piece of us dies every time we watch one of these videos,” says Jones. “White people watch it, and they can’t believe it. We know it happened. We don’t need to watch it.”

In the wake of Floyd’s death and in the midst of the social movement which followed, she was invited to help create Lake Highlands Area Moms Against Racism, an amalgam of mothers from a variety of backgrounds interested in teaching their children that all people deserve dignity and respect. Jones’ reputation as an activist in the Black community made her a perfect choice to help lead the group, and the two white women who initially conceived LHAMAR recognized their own delicate role as “allies” for the organization.

“I believed it was time for white allies to play a bigger role in the conversation,” says Jones. “We’ve done this for so many years and gone unheard. We’ve been shouting from the rooftops, and no one has listened to us. It’s time for privileged white people to say, ‘Even we’ve had enough.’”

Her background helps her appreciate the nuance of the problem. Her father devoted decades to law enforcement, and her godfather was a sheriff back home in Mississippi. She’s rearing three sons, and the idea of sending them out into the night to attend a party or work an evening shift scares her senseless.

“When you hear people ask for police accountability, people assume we’re police bashing. That’s not the case. I grew up seeing good policing, so I know it exists. I’m hopeful that the problem has a solution.”

“We know that most officers are good,” she says, “but we’ve seen so much and had to have this conversation again and again each time a Black boy is killed by police. My three boys ask me, ‘Why are y’all pushing for police reform? You are just upsetting yourselves. Nothing is going to change.’ That is heartbreaking.”

The Lake Highlands Area Moms, who recently added “and more” to their moniker to include dads, grandparents and friends who support the cause, branched out from its original project, the “Say Their Names” traveling memorial to people of color who died at the hands of police officers. They now organize adult, teen and children’s book clubs, podcasts, school board advocacy and petitions for police reform, among other methods of education and activism. Every mom, they say, deserves freedom from fear that her child will be killed on his way home tonight.

“We used to have Crime Dog McGruff come into schools and communities to invite kids to tell police when they need help or see a crime,” says Jones. “Now we tell children to stay away from cops. We need to get back to community policing. We have to get back to knowing our patrol officers.

“Our ultimate goal is mutual trust – mutual respect between officers and the community. For too long in black and brown communities, officers have seen a black or brown person and assumed they were doing something wrong, as if walking down the street is a problem. I want the police to know I am for you, and I want you to be for me. I want you to allow my son to come home at night, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

like many millennials, Taler Jefferson usually has her smartphone in one hand and her laptop in the other. She might log on during dinner or in the middle of the night, which matches the odd hours of physicians she assists as a program coordinator at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

“Doctors are still working at two in the morning, and so is my generation,” says the 31-year-old, who gave up her job as a Dallas ISD science teacher to work from home when the pandemic hit. “I can constantly be on top of things. My generation – that’s

just the way we move.”

If the Jefferson name sounds familiar, you may know that her family is a kind of royalty in historic Hamilton Park. Her great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson, Sr., was the original owner of the home she now lives in with her mom, Nichole. Her great uncle, Thomas Jefferson, Jr., has been a community leader for decades and was dubbed by former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings as Mayor of Hamilton Park.

Jefferson went to college in North Carolina, got a master’s degree in Georgia and worked in Virginia before returning to give back to the neighborhood – and the people – who reared her. She formed the Salome Foundation in 2018, and since then the nonprofit has been investing in the community. The name came to her during a sermon at her uncle’s church about the biblical Salome, who brought spices to anoint the body of Jesus.

“I had never heard God speak to me, but in that moment his voice was clear,” recalls Jefferson. She told her uncle – and everyone at the picnic after church – about her plan to aid the people of Hamilton Park and North Dallas. “I was on fire. I recruited board members and applied for nonprofit status, and it grew from there.”

The foundation partnered with Hamilton Park Pacesetter Magnet to serve elementary students, then worked with the Public Improvement District to host Sundays in the Park, an outdoor community concert series. They hosted neighborhood cleanup days and gave a college scholarship to high school seniors.

“We were really building momentum,” she says. “Then COVID hit.”

Salome provided hundreds of meals per week to families hit hard.

“It made a difference. People came up crying, saying they didn’t know how they were going to feed their families. One lady came with 11 kids, but all we had left was milk. She was so grateful.”

When she began getting calls from people in cities an hour away, Jefferson realized the enormity of the need.

“It was rewarding to know people had heard of what we were doing, but it felt like I had the world on my shoulder. One week, our delivery driver got lost, and that upset me. These people are depending on me. I want to deliver.”

Jefferson has learned plenty of lessons along the way, but one has become her mantra.

“I can’t do it myself,” she says. “I have to be strategic. I have to ask for help.”

One of her biggest challenges, and the challenge of other “next generation leaders” bringing fresh ideas to the community where they grew up, is the reluctance of the “old guard” to relinquish the reins. Basketball star Terrell Harris, artist Gerald Leavell, youth football coach Tevar Watson, Thomas Jefferson IV, and others are awash in ideas.

“A lot of things are in the planning stages right now, but the older generation still thinks we’re still 12 years old. We have ideas and resources, and once the new Willie B. Johnson Recreation Center opens, we’ll be killing it.”

The new recreation center is expected to open in September, with a multi-use center, technology lab, indoor basketball court, classrooms and kitchen. The next generation leaders envision basketball camps, football camps, cheerleading camps, STEM lessons, music lessons and other educational and fun opportunities for children and families.

“Hamilton Park made me who I am,” says Jefferson. “I could do my job from anywhere, but I want to give back. My family raised me, but Hamilton Park also raised me. We call it ‘The Island,’ because it really is like an island oasis.”

ashley Olford never thought much about becoming a police officer. Then a friend in the Dallas Police Department said officials were offering a $10,000 bonus for new hires. She quickly signed on the dotted line.

At the end of a long patrol shift, Olford answered a call to handle a problem teen who’d run away from her mom’s house twice before. She brought the girl home and prepared to return to the station, but the fed-up mom refused to let the girl back in. Olford, a person of profound faith, heard herself offer to take in the 15-year-old herself.

“I knew then that this was my calling, that God placed me in this job for a reason,” says Olford, who moved into a bigger apartment and included the girl in vacations and family gatherings. After a year, she was ready to change her life and reunite with her grateful mother. The three remain close today.

Olford brought lessons from that experience to her 12 years as a school resource officer (SRO) at Thurgood Marshall Elementary and her current gig as SRO at Lake Highlands High School. The first lesson, she laughs, is not to bring every needy kid home with you.

“I can’t rescue them all, so I have to step back and find other ways to help.”

There are plenty of troubled teens at LHHS – kids fighting drug and alcohol addiction, kids who want to commit suicide, kids dealing with unwanted pregnancy and kids being abused at home. The SROs keep jars of candy in their second-floor office to woo students in to open up.

“You have no idea what these kids are going through at home. It’s heartbreaking,” says Olford. “Some kids go to an empty home after school. They feed and dress themselves because their parents are working two or three jobs. Their only meal may be the one they get at school. Their only hug, their only interaction is from one of us.”

Olford remembers the mom who came in because her daughter was repeatedly truant. The girl was surly when SROs questioned her and refused to speak at all. Olford assured her she’d never give up on her and checked on her repeatedly. A day later, the girl came bounding into the SRO office to shoot the breeze with her new friend.

“These kids want attention – even if it’s negative,” says Olford. “They want someone who

cares about them. It took me a while to learn that, but now I hug them and bring them in and let them know I care.”

That doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and rainbows for SROs at LH-area schools. One only needs to turn on the television news to see campus threats are real. Olford’s main focus is to protect kids, teachers and fellow SROs from danger while on school grounds.

“Students bring things to school they shouldn’t bring or do things they shouldn’t do. It may indicate there is something going on at home, and I can often get them to open up in ways they can’t or won’t with teachers or administrators.

I can reach out to CPS or social services and get the ball rolling to help a kid.”

The biggest challenge for Olford and her fellow officers, she says, is developing trust in young people.

“You see it in the news and hear it in the public – our job doesn’t have a great reputation right now in certain communities. Starting with these kids, I try to be the opposite of the negative they are hearing. I want to be the officer who treats people like I want my mom to be treated. I understand why some communities fear the badge. It’s from experience, it’s based on what they’ve seen and heard. I want kids to have a good experience. I may have to be tough, I may have to put handcuffs on them, but in the end I want to help.”

dr. Sheron Patterson’s role as senior pastor at Hamilton Park United Methodist Church often has her counseling victims of PTSD. Some are war veterans, some are crime victims and some have had traumatic encounters with police. One Black parishioner was driving to work with her young daughter when officers, guns drawn, pulled them over, handcuffed them and tossed them into the back of a squad car. It turned out the cops were seeking a Hispanic man and woman. Weeks later, the family remains fearful and anxious.

Patterson, reared in the heart of the South by a police officer dad and schoolteacher mom, has seen incidents like this in her community before. Over Mother’s Day weekend, she created an online petition on behalf of moms all over the city calling for Mayor Eric Johnson and Police Chief Eddie Garcia to institute reforms. The petition calls for police to stop shooting unarmed persons, de-escalate interactions with citizens, employ social workers to assist with mentally ill and unsheltered persons and limit the use of militarized weapons, among other mandates. It calls for the city to invest in low-income communities, expand community oversight, end unqualified immunity and become transparent with excessive force complaints.

“Now is the time to move forward,” says Patterson. “I gathered a group of interracial moms, and we targeted Mother’s Day because we wanted to stand in solidarity with all the mothers who have lost sons and daughters. Mothers are powerful and strong. We are the givers of life, and I want us to be the protectors of life, as well.”

In the 1950s and 60s, police departments were recruiting officers of color into Black communities. Patterson’s dad took a job in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Back in those days, it was a big deal to be a police officer in the Black community. My dad was a celebrity. Everybody knew Bill Covington, and everybody knew me because I was his daughter. It was a good life. He never fired his gun in 30 years. The people loved him, and he loved them. He was more of a social worker - he knew the troubled kids. There was crime, but the community was cohesive.

“After he retired, there was an escalation of violence and police brutality, and he would always tell me, ‘It doesn’t take all of that.’ If you want to shoot somebody, how about one time, not 14 times.”

HPUMC has continued to minister to its parishioners despite the challenges of the pandemic. Worship and praise have continued online, and meals have been served to those in need. Patterson believes seeking justice is part of her mission.

“This is God’s work. God cares about the downtrodden and the mistreated. It’s all through the Bible. It’s no coincidence that I preached in Exodus two Sundays ago about Moses setting the captives free, and the Egyptians were the oppressors to the children of Israel. The Egyptians whipped and beat the children of Israel. The pharaoh hated them, and his hate trickled down to his soldiers – the police force – who beat them. It also trickled down to the citizenry who, like the Karens of today, felt they could mistreat the people around them.”

Patterson wasn’t expecting a guilty verdict in the George Floyd trial, but she believes justice prevailed.

“We survived, give God praise. The same God who brought me through the past will cover me and keep me going. The Bible says we walk by faith and not by sight, so I can’t worry about what I see or how ugly it is. I’ve got to keep walking and have faith in God to pull me through. When God called me to the ministry, that said God would order my steps and my stops. God will put a hedge of protection around me, and I operate in the anointing of the Lord. My favorite Bible verse is Psalm 27, ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?’ God gives me a fearlessness – it is not of me, it is of the Holy Spirit.”

new York filmmaker Meredith Alloway hasn’t spent all of her life behind the camera. She impressed Lake Highlands audiences with starring roles in dramas and musicals at the high school and the Methodist church before taking her talents to SMU. Neighbors figured it was just a matter of time before they saw her name in lights on Broadway or on Hollywood’s silver screens.

Inside Alloway, though, beat the heart of a filmmaker.

“I definitely knew I wanted to make movies from a young age,” she says. “The first film I made was in fourth or fifth grade, and any time friends would hang out would me, we made movies together. I made horror movies, and my first, called Consequential Death, was pretty dark for a kid. I directed it and was in it, and I killed off my character pretty quickly and came back as a ghost.”

Alloway was eager to get to the center of the action in L.A. or New York, but she knew she had lessons to learn.

“I remember playing Andromache in The Trojan Women in high school and thinking I don’t have the tools to do great theater. I don’t know how to access these emotions or handle the text.” She went on to SMU, where she studied conservatory acting as well as playwriting and directing. She also spent a semester studying acting in London at the British American Drama Academy. Then she headed for Hollywood.

“Being in L.A., being an actress starting off, a lot of it can feel like it’s not on your own terms,” says Alloway. “When you’re auditioning, you feel like you’re waiting for someone to give you an opportunity. So, I wrote something where I was the right actress for the job. That was a return to acting on my own terms, as my own director.”

Over the years, she also stepped into journalism, writing for publications such as Filmmaker Magazine, Vanity Fair and Playboy. She has traveled to international film festivals to interview artists from all aspects of the business. Olivia Wilde, Dev Patel, Marion Cotillard and other respected talents shared their hard-earned advice with Alloway – and her audience.

“It was like a film school education. There are a lot of people creating things, and you have to find

your voice and find the story you want to tell. Interviewing a bunch of different filmmakers helped me find what I like and see we need more representation from women and POC (people of color) artists. I took my time learning who was out there making what, because you have to find your film family.”

After her short film Deep Tissue premiered at SXSW and toured film festivals internationally, Alloway went on to partner with Hulu and the Sundance Film Institute on her next film, Ride. Last fall, she worked with 20th Digital Studio on First Date, which is also featured on Hulu. She directed Paris Jackson’s music video, “Let Down,” and her first feature film, High Priestess, is currently in development with a renowned production company. She’s busy working on her first studio script, which she calls “a fun, haunted movie,” and mapped it out on a massive whiteboard in her home office.

Like choosing your favorite child, Alloway says it’s tough to say which she loves best – writing, directing and acting are enjoyable for different reasons.

“They all lead to the same place – a good story. I always knew I wanted to make my own films, and maybe I’ll act in some, and maybe I won’t.”

Alloway now lives and works in New York’s East Village, where she’s been grappling with the pandemic and its shutdown of projects and theaters. “It’s hard working on a horror script in my office until late, then going to bed six feet away. I love going out to write in hotel lobbies, and my favorite spot just opened up, so I’m very excited about that. I met a woman in her 70s who was also writing there, and we decided to exchange emails and become work buddies. It was a New York moment.”

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tara Cavazos’ family health clinic resembles Cheers, that neighborhood bar from ’80s television. Check in with a cough or rash, and you’ll get a hearty reception at the clinic where everybody knows your name.

Cavazos’ training began long before she earned her degree in nursing from Baylor. As kids, she and her three siblings would help fold the sterilized towels in her father’s orthopedic surgery center in Oklahoma. On Saturdays, he’d bring them into the clinic and put casts on for fun. It was good practice for later years, when they played sports and broke an occasional arm or foot.

When Cavazos was young, she wanted to become a sports medicine doctor, but she also wanted to be a mom. Her parents later divorced, and she saw how difficult it was for her dad to balance work and home responsibilities.

“I went to nursing school,” she says, “but I realized there wasn’t a lot of autonomy in making decisions for the patient. As a nurse you’re with the patient a lot, but you’re carrying out (someone else’s) orders.”

Cavazos worked in a pediatric ICU while studying to become a nurse practitioner then served in West Dallas, treating mostly uninsured patients who spoke limited English.

“I got to see a different side of health care,” says Cavazos. “It was a great opportunity to understand the costs and how to creatively take care of a person who doesn’t have much money.”

She later went to work for Catapult Health, which specializes in corporate wellness and employee

health. She saw the efficiencies of preventing illness instead of treating it, then moved into management, leading 100 nurse practitioners.

“That exposed me to the business side. We talked about budgets, reimbursement and claim processing, and I worked with leaders in disease prevention and health promotion. It prompted me to get my doctorate.”

Cavazos was balancing her job at Catapult, her doctoral program and her third baby on the way when a friend proposed starting a family practice. Husband, Peter, a graduate of Lake Highlands High School, encouraged the idea. Lakewood Family Health opened in 2016.

“We aren’t trying to compete with big box medicine, but we felt they were treating people like a number. When we schedule patients, we block out 30 minutes so there’s time for us to be in the room and not just talk about what they’re coming in for – a rash or cold – but what they’ve done this summer and how is the family. It helps us take care of our patients better.

“We want this to be a Disneyland experience. From the time you walk in the door, every interaction you have with our nurses, our providers, our checkout, you feel valued, you feel taken care of. It should be a place you want to bring your family,” she says.

Lakewood Family Health does a little of everything – cough, cold, runny nose, physical and wellness screenings and chronic disease management. It also has an aesthetic side, doing Botox, fillers, laser hair removal and microneedling.

When the pandemic erupted, Cavazos’ crew adapted quickly. The back parking lot was converted to a drive-up COVID testing center. Telehealth visits became common for simple evaluations.

About 15% of Lakewood Family Health patients choose self-pay instead of Medicare or commercial insurance, and the clinic makes that easy by negotiating reduced lab fees and listing those charges up front. They know budget-conscious patients sometimes skip labs, causing providers to miss issues like diabetes or kidney failure.

“There are so many hidden costs in health care. It’s important to get patient buy-in. I can tell a patient what to do, but if we’re not on the same page – if they can’t afford the test or the medication – we’re not going to get a good outcome. We have to work as a team.”

On social media, Cavazos is often asked about bug bites, sports injuries and allergic reactions. She enjoys helping friends and neighbors but admits she struggles to find those boundaries.

“A lot of our patients are busy working moms like us. People send me pictures, ‘How serious is this rash? Does this cut need stitches? Should we get an x-ray?’ When things happen there’s a lot of fear. People don’t know what to do. I help patients come up with a plan.”

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