Dublin graduate Derris (Lancaster) Lueck knows how it feels to be a young mother working hard to make a home for her family. Now, as a realtor, she helps people in that position find a home they love.
“That’s always been my dream, is to help find nice homes for single parents, or just single income families — something that they’re proud of,” she said.
Lueck graduated from Dublin’s Paradigm Accelerated Charter School in 2010. She had a daughter her senior year, and worked odd jobs at Golden Chick and Fibergrate to make ends meet. She started college, but didn’t finish and moved to Louisiana to be close to her father for a few years.
She moved back to Dublin in 2016, and decided to get her real estate license. “My aunt is a realtor, and so she pushed me to it and helped me do all of that,” Lueck said. “Buying a home is exciting, and I wanted to help people do that, especially young parents and first-time home buyers. A lot of people don’t think that they can buy a house. They think it’s really hard, but it’s actually easy, and there’s a lot of programs and things right at your fingertips that you can use.”
Lueck loves the flexible hours of the real estate business. “I was tired of missing my kids’ things,” she said. “I was a single mom at the time and couldn’t make school events or anything else because I was working so much.”
Now, she spends several days a week working on her real estate business, making ads and publicizing listings, and also helps out another realtor as a transaction coordinator. Lueck also works part time at the Texas Center for Oral and Facial surgery a few days a week in Stephenville.
Eventually, Lueck hopes to be able to take her real estate business full time, and maybe invest in some rental properties. “Eventually I want to buy a bunch of property myself and have some real properties, maybe some Airbnbs,” she said. “I’ve always kind of dreamed of having affordable rental housing for single parents or oneincome families, just because I was in that situation for a long time, and it was really hard to find a nice place that single income families can afford.”
An average week for Lueck can be hectic. She and her husband have daughters still at home, so their days are filled with school activities and extracurriculars like softball and cheer.
Lueck met her husband, Tyson Lueck, through mutual friends. The couple enjoys riding motorcycles together, as well as working out and spending time outside. “In the last three years, I really started enjoying the gym,” she said. “We have an at-home gym and we lift a lot of weights. I spend a lot of time with my family and close friends. We like to barbecue. We’ve got a pool. We like to host a lot of things at our house, throw some food on the grill and hang out in the pool and have a few drinks.”
Lueck’s mother, Sondra Vanderpool Spurger, still lives in Dublin, and her father, Kelvin Lancaster, lives in Louisiana.
Lueck is proud of how far she’s come since her younger years. “When I started out adulthood, I was still a child, yeah, and I was making a lot of mistakes. I just didn’t set myself up for success,” she said. “So I think overcoming that, moving from here to Louisiana and kind of trying to start over, was a big thing.”
Throughout her life, Lueck has found inspiration in her family, especially her children. “I started out as a very young, inexperienced mom, and so really my daughter was kind of what gave me the inspiration to get out of the situation that I was in and try to do better, and try to give her a better life than I had, so that she doesn’t start out adulthood where I started out.
Lueck’s advice to Dublin graduates is to work hard and don’t be afraid to ask for help. “You can overcome anything if you work hard,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where you came from or what you’re going through. There’s always something better on the other side. You just have to believe in yourself and keep trying and keep pushing. And this is a great community, and there are great resources and people that are willing to help you, and you just ask for help if you need it. Don’t be ashamed, because everybody needs it at one point in their life.”
— Where Are They Now chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.