Photography by Corrie Aune
Jayne Lumbley was up early on a Sunday morning when she glimpsed a flash against her living room wall. That seemed odd — lightning was not in the forecast. Then she smelled smoke, ran to a window, and saw sparks flying off an electrical transformer next door. She hollered at her husband — “Joseph!”— and lunged for the phone.
The Lumbleys moved into their North Bishop Avenue home Aug. 16, 1977 — “the day Elvis died,” Joseph recalls.
In ensuing years, they have seen interesting and shocking things at the adjacent property, 825 N. Bishop, a single-family style cottage that has operated as commercial businesses as far back as the couple can recall.
For the past 12 years the occupant was Agencia Hispana, a family-owned notary public outfit catering to Dallas’ Spanish-speaking community.
And on this cold morning, just three days into the new year, Agencia Hispana was on fire.
The Lumbleys had come to know owner Jackie Briseño and her family and staff. Even though it was the weekend, Joseph could not be certain everyone was gone. So while Jayne spoke to a 911 operator, he bolted out the door in pajamas.
“I could not even believe how fast it was burning,” he says.
He smashed out a side window and screamed, “Is anyone in there?”
First responders arrived within minutes and contained the fire before it reached any neighboring properties. To everyone’s relief, no one had been inside.
A family business
Agencia Hispana has been serving Oak Cliff residents for 30 some years. Carlos J. Romero operated out of a West Davis Street address during the ’90s before his daughter Jackie Briseño broke off on her own and eventually opened the Bishop Arts location. Now, at 89, Carlos works for her.
“It is truly a family business,” says Briseño, who’s lived in Oak Cliff her whole life.
The 48-year-old, at least outwardly, has hardly missed a beat since absorbing the hard hit on her agency (though she does tear up when talking about it). She put off plans to sell her house on Montclair, a bespoke abode reflecting her style and personality — luxurious, honest, a tad whimsical and wholly welcoming. It’s where we meet, and she tells us she is considering renting it out until she and her business are on better financial footing.
Briseño explains that her mom, Antonia Romero, immigrated from Monterey, Mexico in the ‘70s, just before Jackie was born.
As long as she can remember her family has been advocating for immigrants and building strong ties in the Dallas area.
“Even as a child, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but Dad would take us on these marches,” she says. “My parents were very involved in immigrant rights. We had close family friends who were immigration lawyers, so I saw a lot of what they did. We would volunteer at churches, work with Catholic Charities. It’s a passion I grew up around. Like they say, it’s in your blood.”
In a nutshell, Agencia Hispana provides notary services to the Latinx community. But such a generic description belies the business’ importance to its spectrum of clients — for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, the notary, translation and other services are essential for a wide array of legal documents.
From 825 N. Bishop, Briseño had been assisting people with all these things and countless others.
Politics and changing regulations can lead to confusion and backlog that affects her work and clientele.
For instance, President Barack Obama in 2012 enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act, which protects people brought unlawfully into the country as children from deportation. President Donald Trump rescinded DACA in 2017. Joe Biden reinstated it in January 2021, but months later a federal judge put a stop to new applications. Now there are millions of applications in limbo from those seven or so months, Briseño explains.
It is but one example of the type of issue she has to stay on top of and help others navigate. If the need goes beyond what she can provide, Briseño has a network of trusted connections — lawyers and doctors, et cetera — to whom she refers clients.
A house with a history
By the time she arrived at 825 N. Bishop the day of the fire, everything had been destroyed.
A demolition crew tore down what remained of the structure, leaving the house, built in the 1920s, a smoldering pile of papers and rubble.
While it had operated commercially for as long as neighbors can recall, it blended in with other neighborhood residences.
Its sky-gray exterior and freshly painted white columns bracketing a broad front porch — not to mention the emerald green accent wall inside — added to the welcoming atmosphere at the agency.
Before Jackie Briseño moved in, a group of young lawyers — including precinct 5 Justice of The Peace Juan Jasso along with Domingo Garcia — officed there.
Jasso says it was that office that brought him to Dallas in 1986 when he finished law school in Houston.
“A lawyer owned the house and the rest of us rented spaces from him, so there were three, four, maybe five, attorneys in that little building, that little house. It’s where I got my start. I think it may be where Domingo got his as well.”
Jasso came right over the morning of the fire and gave Jackie, and the rest of the staff, a big hug.
“She is resourceful, resilient, and was already making plans to rebuild. She even grabbed me for a selfie — ‘a selfie with my judge,’ she said — before I left.”
The Lumbleys next door say the property had some colorful, at times tragic, history.
Once in the early ’90s, when a divorce attorney was operating there, a man ostensibly distraught by separation, gunned down his wife right there on the property. “She was dead in the car,” Joseph Lumbley recalls.
Jasso, who had moved on by then, says he remembers the story well, because an associate was still officing there when it happened. The man had told his wife’s attorney that he was ready to sign the divorce papers and that she should meet him there. He arrived early, and when she pulled up he went to the car, shot her and then himself in the gut. Then he went into the office — bleeding, waving the gun around — and told the secretary he just needed the phone and called his wife’s mother to confess what he had done.
“Then he apparently shoots himself again but I guess he doesn’t die because after he recovers enough and goes to jail, he’s there for a while and then calls our friend in family law to ask if he’ll help him in the child custody case,” Jasso recounts.
Jasso says that, quite understandably, that particular associate left private practice soon after and “joined the EPA or something.”
During another era, the Lumbleys recall, 825 was home to a so-called “massage parlor.”
“There were a lot of cars, people coming and going all hours,” Jayne recalls.
They installed “hot tubs and stuff,” the Lumbleys had heard, but that didn’t last long.
Joseph, who works in the real estate trade, says he has witnessed extensive change over the past 40-plus years, on this street and throughout this part of Oak Cliff.
He used to be part of a Mini Cooper club whose members refused to come to Oak Cliff because “they didn’t own flack jackets,” he says with a chuckle. Now the property values around here are some of the steepest in the city.
The woman is nonstop
One of the very first things Jackie Briseño did after her business burned to the ground was pitch handwritten signs in the property’s scorched earth, so clients knew how to reach her.
“We are making appointments. We’re getting into tax season. There are people who have been relying on us for 30 years, doing their taxes. It will be a little complicated. We’re just asking them to be patient with us,” she says.
Within days of the fire she was searching for a new location. She found the perfect building at 125 Centre Street, about a mile from the Bishop location.
“Paul Lockman, the building owner — he saved the day,” she says. “There is even a ramp at the front of the building, for my dad, who relies on a wheelchair now. I saw that and I knew it was the right place.”
She has painted the accent wall inside already — bright pink. It’s how she’s feeling, she says. From the time she received Jayne Lumbley’s frantic call, Briseño has wasted little time wallowing in the loss.
Jasso, for one, says while seeing his old office in shambles was disturbing, he is thankful Agencia Hispana and its people are safe, sound and motivated to move forward.
“We have worked in the same circles for many years,” he says. “What she does is important to our community.”
Head high and counting her blessings, Briseño is getting on with her life and, as promised, rebuilding.
“All my amazing neighbors from the first day came out to help including my best friends, Gregory Barker, Peter Guira, of course, the Lumbleys were there the whole time, and so many more people in the neighborhood, bringing food, pastries — that is how we mourn a loss in my culture,” she says. “My building burned down, and that was a tragedy, but all the love and support I received from my Oak Cliff community and staff — it’s what being an Oak Cliff resident is all about.”
