Morgan Daniel Phelps was born on October 24, 1984, to Ronald Phelps and Tatiana Chavez. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Columbus, Mississippi, but Tatiana and Morgan moved out before he turned one.
On February 28, 1988, Child Protective Services took Morgan away from his mother. Chavez had left her three-year-old son strapped in a car seat in her car while she was inside a bar getting drunk. An anonymous tipster had called CPS and reported the location of the car.
Little Morgan then lived with his father for about seven months in the same one-bedroom apartment where they'd lived when he was born. Three days before his fourth birthday, Ronald was killed in a drive-by shooting, and once again, Morgan found himself in CPS custody.
After a few years of moving from foster parent to foster parent, he was placed with Hack and Debbie Pierce from Oxford, Mississippi. The Pierces, who were in their 50s, had no children of their own, and Morgan’s story touched their hearts. After going through the proper legal channels, Morgan Daniel Phelps became Morgan Daniel Pierce.
Hack and Debbie owned the little Toy Shoppe on Courthouse Square in Oxford, and Morgan spent a lot of time there after school and on weekends. At 15, he started working there full time, and when Morgan was 21, his parents let him take over the managerial role of the shop and added his name to the deed.
Debbie was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2006 and passed away four months later. Hack died in his sleep just five months after his wife passed away. Everyone said he simply couldn’t survive without her.
After their deaths, Morgan became the sole owner of the shop. He has a decent business and employs eight people. The shop is open year-round but has its best business in the winter months.
Morgan has also continued to do well in his personal life, despite the loss of his parents, and recently became engaged to his girlfriend.
Even so, his troubled childhood still comes back to haunt him occasionally, and he has had a few minor run-ins with the law, most often around holidays that are typically spent with family.
