TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Homeless Cowgirl Nears Trip Milestone

ADVERTISEMENT

By LINDSAY PETERSON

lpeterson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 17, 2009

MARIANNA - Six weeks after saddling her horses and hitting the road, Donna Byrne is on the verge of a milestone. If the weather is right, she'll cross the Florida-Alabama border tomorrow, nearly 450 miles from where she started in Arcadia.

It brings her nearly halfway to her destination - Texas.

She started out as a nobody with nothing to lose. But as news of her trek spread across Florida, she became a celebrity, at least among horse owners. And her fame is likely to grow when the CBS Early Show broadcasts her story.

CBS Reporter Priya David spent the day with her last week, even rented a horse and rode with her for a while, Byrne said

"It was cool, man. I liked her. We had fun."

The airing date for the story hasn't been scheduled yet.

A National Public Radio reporter tracked Byrne down about three weeks into her trip and produced a story for the syndicated show "Day to Day."

And a local man, Johnny Buczynski, wrote a song about her, "A Cowgirl's Journey."

"This here's a story it's sad but it's true

"It happened to Donna; it could happen to you," it begins.

Byrne's story goes like this:

She lost her job working on a small ranch in the Arcadia area last year and wasn't able to find any other steady work. She lost her home when she couldn't pay the rent. But she wasn't going to lose her two horses, Tonto and Jay.

So she loaded them up and headed out. She was aiming for Texas, she said, hoping to find ranch work.

Looking like they'd stepped out of a Western, she and the two horses began to attract attention as they approached Tampa on U.S. 301. People stopped to give her money and over the next several days a group of horse owners connected by e-mail and Web sites formed to find places for Byrne and her horses to stay at night.

She likes the attention she's getting. But some people have gotten a little pushy, she said, trying to get her to stop or at least take a ride to Texas.

"Some people need to mind their own business," she said. "I want to make this ride on my own."

She's taking it slowly. She spent about two weeks with a family outside Tallahassee, waiting out a cold front and getting over an illness.

"I just take it one day at a time and let God tell me when he's ready for me to pull out," she said. "When I try to do it my way, everything just gets messed up."

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

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT