Logen, 27, is from Hamilton and is the middle of three siblings. But her mother became addicted to drugs and struggled. Eventually, they all became homeless starting in Logen’s third-grade year up until the school district intervened during her eighth-grade year.
“We slept in cars, we stayed at friends’ houses. I didn’t do my homework, I didn’t take showers, so naturally, the school got involved,” she said. “We got put in foster care immediately.”
They moved to Forest Park and she attended Winton Woods before going to Scarlet Oaks, a vocational school system in southwest Ohio. Her mom was in prison when she graduated high school in 2014. But when her mom was released from Marysville prison, she moved to Tennessee in 2019, trying to stay sober and away from the demons.
Logen moved down to be with her.
“She was doing so good at first, and then she got back on drugs,” Logen said. She had two young kids at the time, and couldn’t have them around her mom, so Logen moved back to Hamilton with her kids. She was afraid to come back to the city, fearing she’d follow the same path as her mom.
That fear, she believes, helped her push her to want to be successful.
Logen and her kids, now 8 and 4, moved into her kids’ grandparents’ house in 2021, the same year her mom died and she started her TikTok account. She had left all her worldly possessions in Tennessee, returning to her hometown with nothing but her kids. But two years later, she’s found success. She has a car, four jobs, and a home.
She also has more than a million people who follow her on that TikTok account. The very first video happened by chance, when a neighbor came over to her grandparents’ house and asked to prank a friend.
“That first one was so random,” Logen said. “I had a friend, and he had a friend that just started at McDonald’s, and said, ‘It would be so funny if you prank called him.’ And I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”
Then a lot of positive feedback rolled in and led to the next prank call and the next.
“I just posted it and hundreds of comments saying, ‘Call my friend, call my friend.’ I just noticed people really connected with the idea of pranking.”
She never does mean pranks, though they may be a little cringy at times, but at the end of the day, it’s a time for people to laugh.
“I like to do things that make people laugh,” she said. “At the end of the call, they’re like, ‘Oh, my god, I’m so stupid, I just got prank called.’”
Deb Stratton was pranked, set up by her daughter asking Logen to prank her in hopes to get some exposure for her book series, Urban Bigfoot. Logen pretended to be a crazed fan when she called during one of her live TikTok streams that had about 12,000 people watching.
Stratton was weirded out a bit by the fact someone called her private cellphone, but went along. Logen asked her to read from the first book in her six-book series, and she did.
“I was trying to be polite and kind and kind of go with it, and I realized toward the end when she tells everyone it was a prank ... I was just wowed,” Stratton said. “The fact she was even called me was amazing because it really did help a lot.”
During the call, the Missouri author started getting notifications pinging her phone.
“I was so grateful that I was overwhelmed that I never thought my books would ever sell,” she said. Before the prank, Deb would see about 10 to 12 copies sold a month. Now she’s seeing 500 to 600, and attributes at least 3,000 to 4,000 book sales to that call. It could be more, she said.
“There are still quite a few followers of her saying, ‘I’ve seen you on her page, I’m coming to support you.’” Stratton said.
But Logen has come a long way from the “normal” life of living in her mom’s car with her sisters, and wants to pay things forward. She wants to give back, hoping to work with the foster care agency that took her and talk to the kids who are now facing an uncertain future like she once did.
“You’re conditioned to think that what you have is what you have, and if you don’t have the opportunity or means, what can you do?” she said. “It’s hard to get out of that mindset. Now, I can literally do whatever I want.”
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