Tara Leanne Worley

Tara Leanne Worley (Whitlock), 51, of Frisco, TX passed away Saturday, July 29, 2023 after a very short illness. Tara was born October 14, 1971 in Shreveport, LA to Mary Branch (Brandon) and Frank Roubieu.

Tara graduated from Huntington High School in Shreveport in 1989. While there she came out of her shell as a member of the dance team. After starting her family, Tara returned to school and graduated from Louisiana State University in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in nursing and became certified as a Registered Nurse. She returned to school and received a master’s degree in nursing from the University of South Alabama and became board certified as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner in 2013.

Tara loved her career in medicine. As a new LSU grad, she was placed right into the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at Oschner Medical Center in New Orleans as a CCU nurse. She excelled in that role and moved over to the Oschner Heart Transplant Clinic where she found her calling working with critically ill cardiac patients. While there, she became a transplant nurse, a heart transplant coordinator and eventually the Nursing Supervisor for the Heart Transplant Clinic. She was also the Chairperson of the Quality Assurance and Performance Insurance Committee as well as the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) Program Director and was responsible for obtaining Joint Commission certification for the program. Tara felt like she had more to contribute to her patients and returned to school to become a medical provider as an NP. She followed her husband, Jim, when his military orders changed to Williamsburg, Virginia in 2014. She worked at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News splitting her time between general cardiology in the clinic and working in the hospital on the cardio-thoracic surgery service. At Riverside she found a new love of teaching when she took the role as preceptor to several nursing students. She and Jim moved to Texas in 2022 to build their ‘forever’ life. Tara was hired at Baylor Scott & White Heart Hospital – Plano where she worked on the High Risk Cardiology service which she was quick to say was her dream job. Tara was universally loved by her co-workers and most importantly to her, by her patients.

Tara and her husband Jim were married at her favorite place, on the beach in Hawaii, in 2012. Tara spent her free time engrossed in her second passion which was the law and the legal system and taking care of her beloved hairless cat and emotional support animal, Jasper. Tara knew her Savior from a young age and was a member of the Church of the King in Mandeville, LA and attended the Williamsburg Community Chapel in VA.

Tara is preceded in death by her mother and father.

Survivors include her husband, Jim; her daughter, Lindsey (Neyland) LeBouef and her husband Stephen of St Louis, MO; her son, Charles ‘Trey’ Neyland, III of Frisco, TX; her step-son, Tayler Worley of Dubuque, IA; one sister, Tangie Sadat and her husband Shawn of Houston, TX; two half-brothers, Jeffrey DeFatta of Keithville, LA and Adam Roubieu of Bethany, OK; many nieces, nephews and cousins and extended family that all she loved dearly.

In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made in Tara’s name to these charities that support causes she was passionate about; American Heart Association, www. heart.org, or Futures Without Violence, www.futureswithoutviolence. org, supporting abused women and children. If you have a local or preferred charity that supports these causes, she would fully endorse supporting them in her name.

Funeral service will be 10:00 a.m., Saturday, August 5, 2023 at the Charles M. Nelson Memorial Chapel. Interment will follow at Gobler Cemetery. Online condolences may be sent to the family at nelsonfuneral. com.