DEER LODGE — In the middle of the day on a Friday in January, a drunk driver smashed into a little historic building that was home to a daycare located in downtown Deer Lodge.
Now the owner of that daycare is trying to recoup funds that were lost over the last nine months with a crowdfunding effort.
"Froebel is the one that created kindergarten as a garden of flowers, and so, this is my wild flowers, so yeah...." says Lisa Langley, the owner of Wild Flowers Early Learning Center.
Langley has been working in childcare for over a decade. She opened a daycare in Oregon before moving home to Deer Lodge to open her daycare facility.
"We are in a day care desert, and I’m from this community. I just really wanted to move here and provide what I felt was important to the community."
Last year, Lisa expanded her business with the help of grant funding to create more space for her daycare children. After renovating the little building across the street from her current location, the accident happened.
"At about 2:34 p.m., the woman who had been drinking crashed into my building and drove away," says Langley as she wipes away tears.
On January 17, a 40-year-old woman crashed into a building two doors down from the daycare on Main Street. The truck’s tire became stuck in a stairwell and while reversing, the truck accelerated backing straight into Lisa’s daycare. Kyra Smith, of Deer Lodge, was later arrested and charged with her second DUI offense.
WATCH: Footage of drunk driver crashing into daycare
Nobody was inside the daycare building at the time of the accident, but Lisa says she has experienced a significant financial hit from losing 20 daycare spots every month for the past nine months while the facility awaits repairs.
"We put a lot of time and money and effort into it, and," Langley takes a deep breath.
"Just to have it be not usable for so long right now has been really painful."
Langley is not the owner of her buildings. She has been waiting for the driver’s insurance agency to issue payments to begin rebuilding, but recently she decided to try crowdfunding in order to build her own facility.
"In the future, that’s what I’m hoping, is that we will have a location to serve children consistently."
