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Actor and comedian Joe Piscopo (pictured) was in Dallas May 7 to conduct a little business and to help an autism center that was burglarized last week.
Last Thursday someone broke into a group home run by the Autism Treatment Center of Dallas. A laptop computer, a video game system and games were all stolen, along with the center's dog. The dog, a Yorkie Terrier named 'Diva' has not been found. No arrests have been made.
But today Piscopo visited the center, and an Irving family was there to deliver a new dog named 'Gunner' to the children who live in the group home.
"One of my partners, his son is autistic" says Piscopo. "And he alerted me to what happened so it kind of really tugged on heart strings."
Executives of the center say Piscopo and his friends have replaced all of the stolen items and a local company is in the process of installing an alarm system.
Employees have notified nearby kennels and animal control centers about Diva, but she has not been located.
"I just think that this is just a very special population" says the director, Carolyn Garver. "They (the residents with autism) don't understand a whole lot and sometimes they get a bad break and so this is a good break and I just can't thank everyone enough."
"It was just a couple of Jersey guys, just trying to come to Dallas and give back to the community" says Piscopo.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From CBS 11 in Dallas:
