Support grows for caretaker after drunk driver crashes through Rowlett home

Walking back into her Rowlett home, it’s hard for Tayler Yeager to know where to even begin when it comes to picking up the pieces after she said a drunk driver came crashing through her dining room last month.

“Every time I came back in the house, it was really hard to look at everything. I would break down in tears. I would come in to get clothing and supplies, and I would literally leave things there because I was just… it was discombobulating every time you went in the house,” said Yeager.

It was around 2 a.m. on September 25 when Yeager woke to her son screaming. As she walked out of her bedroom, she was overwhelmed with debris and a pickup truck sitting just feet from her couch where her nephew was sleeping.

“Literally, my whole dining room was destroyed, just in a pile, stuff everywhere,” she said.

With the path to her kids’ rooms blocked, Yeager said she ran around to the front, where police were standing with guns drawn, waiting to arrest the driver following a pursuit.

Yeager’s kids crawled out the window. And weeks later, they’re still working to figure out what comes next.

“We’re very blessed to be alive, but this is definitely a hard situation. I’m a single mom. You know, things are already tight, and I’m in nursing school and figuring everything out,” she said.

Even so, just one day after the wreck, Yeager was back at work.

Amid the chaos, she’s still prioritized her job as a caretaker to brother and sister Jeffrey and Brookanne Clark.

“She just is our arms and legs, helps us do all that,” said Jeffrey Clark.

The siblings, who have muscular dystrophy, are wheelchair-bound.

For eight years, they’ve relied on Yeager to get out of bed, brush their teeth, and start their day.

“Anything that you take for granted or that you do without thinking, we have to have someone do for us, and that’s what Tayler does for us,” said Brookanne Clark.

After years of having Yeager in their home on a daily basis, the Clarks said she and her children have become family.

That’s why Brookanne set up a GoFundMe, rallying the community to help the family, who was uninsured, as they pay for temporary housing and search for a new rental home in Rockwall ISD.

“This has completely turned our lives upside down,” said Yeager.

But just like her employers, Yeager knows she’s moving forward with support.

 “I’m so grateful that she helps me so much. She fights for us, me and my kids,” she said. “It means a lot for me for her to do that for us.”