Sparking joy: A bus driver brought a little bit of joy to young girl Isabella Pieri's life by helping her to braid her hair every day after her mother passed away. Photo / KSLTV
A bus driver brought a little bit of joy to a young girl's life by helping her to braid her hair every day after her mother passed away.
After Isabella Pieri's mother passed from a rare illness there was no one able to style the 11-year-old's hair every morning until her school bus driver Tracy Dean started offering to braid the little girl's hair, KSL TV reported.
The little girl from Alpine, Utah, always wanted her hair done for school but neither she nor her dad knew how to do it until Tracy came along and gave Isabella a surge of confidence.
Tracy braids Isabella's hair every morning and told KLS, "You can't be shy, you've got to talk to them. You treat them like your own kids, you know."
The kind act of braiding her hair has impacted the little girl immensely and she gushed about Tracy, "It makes me feel like she's a mum pretty much to me.
Before Tracy came along, Philip has always struggled with Isabella's hair and he even admitted that when his wife first passed he originally gave his daughter a crew cut.
"I originally just gave her a crew cut because I didn't know how and it was all tangled and I couldn't get it out for anything," he shared.
After Isabella's hair grew back in following the short crew cut, she began just brushing her hair out quickly and throwing it back in a ponytail because that's all she knew how to do.
Now, Isabella is rocking a different hairstyle every day and never knows what she's going to get that morning.
Each day is different when it comes to Tracy's style as she'll sometimes do one braid or double braids and adding a pink flower to the ponytail at the end.
The reason for Tracy's kindness and generosity is the fact that she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago and has kids of her own.
She told the local news that she thought about this when she got sick and even admitted thinking, "Who is going to take care of my little ones?"
"Not that my husband couldn't do it but you know, that's what moms do. They do their kids' hair," she continued.
Ever since Tracy began styling Isabella's hair she has gained a lot more confidence and both her father and teachers are noticing.
One of her teacher's even admitted, "Her head was a little higher that morning and she had a little more of a step," about Isabella wearing her first braid to school.
It's not just Isabella's hair that Tracy braids - she actually does all of the girls' hair on the bus to school.
It started off with Tracy braiding all the other girls' hair and Isabella was too shy to ask at first but eventually got the courage to ask and is quite happy she did.
"It makes me feel happy that they are happy," Tracy admitted about braiding her students' hair.