Montecito TikTok Grandma Goes Viral
Surprise Social Media Stardom for Sissy Taran
By Leslie Dinaberg | August 25, 2022
Read all of the stories in “Our 2022 Active Aging Guide” here.
Not very many grandmas have more TikTok likes than all of their children and grandchildren combined — but Sissy Taran’s entry into social media stardom is hardly typical.
It started, believe it or not, with a fender-bender. Driving on Alameda Padre Serra near the Mission at about 6 o’clock at night on her way to meet a friend for dinner, Taran came out of the intersection and collided with 16-year-old Sammi Schaeffer’s Jeep. Luckily neither Taran or the new driver, a San Marcos High School student, were hurt, and they pulled over to the nearby Mission parking lot to wait for help.
“We were waiting for the tow trucks and all of a sudden I heard this music, and I walked around and her phone was kind of attached to the mirror and she’s singing. … And I said, ‘Sammi, what are you doing?’ And she said, ‘TikTok’,” said Taran. “I didn’t know anything about TikTok. But I said to her, ‘Would you like me to sing with you?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ And that’s how it happened.”
They sang and the tow trucks came and Taran didn’t think about it again for a bit. “And then a friend of mine, a younger friend of mine said, ‘Did you know you’re on TikTok?’ And I was like, ‘What’s TikTok? How do you get to it?’”
The video, which Sammi captioned with “just got into my first car accident,” and “she may not know how to stop at stop signs but u gotta love her #carcrash” and “featuring the queen who hit me herself, love you Sissy” quickly went viral. It was up to 1.6 million views at press time.
“And of course, my grandchildren thought that I was just the coolest person alive. And it was really, it was fun,” laughs Taran.
See the video at tinyurl.com/tiktokgrandma.
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