Editor’s note: To close out 2016, the Post-Tribune is taking a look back at the news through the eyes of the people who helped make it.
Dakota Yorke might be ready for fame and all the trappings that come with it, but it’s still jarring when people recognize her out of context.
Yorke gained notoriety when she was nominated for Portage High School’s prom queen in May. As Northwest Indiana’s first transgender young woman to be nominated as such, she came in first runner-up, but gained a sizable following of people on social media who’re inspired by her.
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It’s easy for the now 19-year-old to forget that she’s known the world over, thanks to social media. After graduating from high school in June, she moved to southern Wisconsin. She now juggles two jobs as a server and retails sales associate, jobs that require her to be in the public eye.
“I’ll be serving a table, and someone will be like, ‘Wait, are you Dakota? What are you doing out here?'” Yorke said, laughing. “It’s kind of weird. I thought no one knows who I am up here, but they’ve seen my story.
“It’s honestly so creepy.”
Yorke decided this past summer to leave the comfort of her Portage home and her family – mom Dawn Yorke, dad John Yorke, little sister Piper and their pets – for a couple reasons, each significant in their own right. She said her local notoriety seemed to be hindering her from getting a job, and for a young woman with plans, not making money wasn’t going to do.
“I was struggling to get a job because everyone knew who I was, or I was ‘too loud,'” she said. “I’d go on interviews, and I’d then wait forever to hear back. I wasn’t going to keep waiting.”
The other reason was the more common one that most young adults go through: She just wanted to be out on her own.
“Don’t get me wrong: I love Indiana. But here, I feel more free, more adult-ish,” she said. “I feel more independent, but I do screw up, too. Like, grocery shopping takes me three hours because I have no idea what kind of food I need to buy, so I’m on the phone with my mom the whole time asking her what kind of cheese I need to get.”
Being on your own is kind of lonely sometimes, she’s discovered. Yorke moved in with her older sister Alyssa’s dad, which is in a remote enough area that she described it as “a jungle,” all trees and nature until you drive a minute, and it isn’t anymore.
She and her sister, who also lives near her in Wisconsin, spent Christmas Eve in Portage at their grandmother Barbara Farano’s place with the whole family. But they returned home Christmas Day – Yorke to an empty house. If there was ever a time where she wished to be with her family and getting advice from her mom, it was then.
“I’m by myself in this big house a lot, and I hardly see my sister because she works,” Yorke said. “But I decided that I could either choose to be depressed, or I could put on Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas (Is You)’ and dance, so that’s what I did. I danced all Christmas.”
For other lonely times, she still has her following on social media, people now watching as she goes through the next step in her transition: hormone therapy.
“Oh my God, I’m going through a second puberty,” she said laughing again. “But I’ve been showing people through my YouTube channel how (I’m doing) because I want to show my transition.”
Yorke said she’s never really had a problem with online bullying. That’s not to say there haven’t been comments here and there, but those who choose to be hateful get blocked because “they’re just dumb at this point” and have nothing to do with her goals of getting to Los Angeles and getting a job in entertainment.
“I feel like people shouldn’t take things too seriously and just be a nice person,” she said. “I look back at high school, and I wasn’t an A-plus student, so college isn’t good for me. I wanted to like my life.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.