Tyesa Walton remembers her senior prom at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood.

She wore a black and gold gown that she bought with savings from her McDonald’s gig. Her aunt paid to have her hair done, and her uncle served as chauffeur.

“He put on a top hat and drove us in a Lincoln Continental,” Walton said.

Her date was the co-captain of the basketball team. He accented his tux with a bracelet he borrowed from his boss at a restaurant on 87th and Stony Island.

“We had the most amazing time,” Walton said.

That was 40 years ago, and now Walton — known lovingly as Ms. Tee Tee — is back at her alma mater teaching special ed.

The path wasn’t easy.

Walton left Chicago two decades ago to teach in Los Angeles and Dubai after a tragic event left her unmoored. She was pregnant with a baby girl when she went into early labor, and by the time she got to the hospital she was hemorrhaging dangerous amounts of blood. Doctors had to use a defibrillator to keep her alive.

Her daughter, Chloe Jade, died in the delivery room.

“They brought me her little footprints, but she didn’t make it,” Walton said. “I keep her memory with a smile, but in the back of my mind I always wonder about her. Who she’d be. What she’d be doing.”

Different cities, different schools, she figured, might help her heal.

“I wasn’t so much running away from something as I was running toward something,” she said.

After more than a decade away, she came home to find her calling.

Shortly after Walton moved back to Chicago from Dubai, a friend suggested they find a way to honor Chloe. Maybe they could collect donated gowns and set up a free boutique for girls who can’t afford prom dresses, her friend suggested.

“I wasn’t ready,” Walton said. “She started collecting dresses anyway.”

They put them in garment bags and stored them in Walton’s garage, where they sat for months. One day, she woke up energized.

“I had this itch I couldn’t scratch,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I got to get these prom dresses to girls.’ I started telling everyone, ‘Please donate. Gently loved dresses.’ I’m going, going, going.”

And then it hit her. Chloe would’ve been going to prom that year.

Walton opened Chloe’s Closet later that year — a repurposed, cinder block room at Dunbar. With the help of friends and fellow teachers and many, many of her beloved students, they turned it into a wall-to-wall boutique. Shoe racks, hangers, tables of accessories.

“This is personal for me,” Walton said. “I was that little girl who lived in the projects. I’m here because somebody helped my mother. Somebody helped us. And we all prevailed. And now I get to turn around and help.”

Chloe’s Closet hosted two dress giveaways in April, where hundreds of dresses — as well as shoes, accessories, even formal wear for young men — found new homes.

“Kids ask me, ‘What’s this cost?’” Walton said. “I tell them, ‘It costs kindness. It costs you being nice to the next person. It costs you wearing that dress and keeping it nice and donating it so someone can wear it again.'”

In 2025, Walton was named Teacher of the Year by ChiGivesBack, a nonprofit social impact organization that sponsors year-round events — toy drives, backpack giveaways, educator celebrations — to get resources to Chicagoans who need them.

As part of honoring Walton, ChiGivesBack artists came to Dunbar and covered the converted space in beautiful murals and a centerpiece tying it all together: “Chloe’s Closet” painted in gold.

“I saw my daughter’s name on that wall,” Walton said. “I just busted out crying. It was the most beautiful thing to see.”

Walton and Chloe’s Closet got some media coverage after the ChiGives Back award, which put her mission on the radar beyond Chicago’s South Side. Donations started pouring in steadily. And not just dresses. Jeans. Sweatsuits. Clothes for every day, not just one day a year.

“These people don’t know me from a can of paint and they’re sending me giant boxes of stuff,” Walton said. “It’s beautiful.”

It has also prompted her to keep Chloe’s Closet open year-round and stock it with clothes and necessities that match the season — shorts in the summer, coats and scarves in the winter.

“We have students who are homeless,” she said. “We have students who have nowhere to wash their clothes. If we can help them get dressed, we can help them stay in school.”

Recently she started stocking Chloe’s Closet with donated food.

“I tell the kids, ‘Pack a sack. Make sure you get enough for your little brothers and sisters,’” she said. “That’s the price. You’ve got to share.”

And that’s how beautiful things grow out of grief, out of despair, out of darkness. That’s how Walton’s daughter gets to keep changing and improving the world. That’s how Walton gets to keep pouring into her and making memories with her.

“I get a lot of peace looking around and being able to help these babies,” she said. “That means everything to me.”

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