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Jobless Cowgirl Heads West

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By LINDSAY PETERSON

lpeterson@tampatrib.com

Published: February 11, 2009

Donna Byrne lost her job in Arcadia a couple of months ago, so she decided to take off for Texas - on horseback.

Her horses, Jay and Tonto, are about all she has left.

"I lost my job and my house. I'm not losin' these guys," she said. Without them, she'd be on foot.

Hoping to reach Ocala in two weeks, Byrne made her way through Hillsborough County on Tuesday, riding Tonto and leading Jay, who was loaded down with about 100 pounds of everything she owns, her clothes, a tent and some blankets.

With her dusty white cowboy hat pulled low, shading blue eyes and a weathered face, she and the horses stood on the side of U.S. 301 in Riverview on Tuesday morning. Six lanes of traffic whooshed by, drivers honking, waving and yelling out.

By evening, she was north of Interstate 4. Getting her horses over I-4 on the 301 overpass was touch and go, she said. Tonto spooked and stepped off the shoulder, forcing a truck to swerve out of the way. Otherwise, the horses have kept their heads.

Byrne, 44, is headed to a horse auction in Ocala, where she hopes to get a few days' work. Then she'll move on to Texas, maybe Amarillo. She's never been there, but she knows they have ranches. And that's the kind of work she's looking for.

Byrne started working with horses when she was a teenager, at stables around Tampa. "I can ride and rope cattle. I'm a cowgirl. That's all I've ever wanted to do."

She tended cattle in Arcadia until the operation shut down a few months ago, she says. Then she went to work in a plant that made butterflies out of silk. That wasn't for her. "They said I wasn't making them right."

So when she lost that job and lost her home because she couldn't pay the rent, she decided to take off, to find a real ranch.

She doesn't have any family to speak of, just a brother she doesn't speak to. But she has friends, she said, who tried to talk her out of taking this trip alone, exposed to the weather and the dangers of the road.

She's taking it easy, covering 10 to 15, she said. "I'm OK. It's been OK so far."

Monday night she slept "under the stars" across from a service station on U.S. 301, where she watered her horses and gave them feed. But Tuesday she and her horses planned to spend the night in Thonotosassa, on the property of a woman who has horses and sought out Byrne after seeing her story on TBO.com.

Byrne hopes to make it to Dade City today.

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834.

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