WELLINGTON CANAL CRASH VICTIM WAS MOM OF THREE
WELLINGTON — Kimberly Pellot didn’t just make friends. She made family, say those who knew her.
“Let me tell you about Kim,” said Dana Warren, a “sister” Pellot met more than a year ago at a bar in Lantana. “She is one of the most kind and gentlest souls.”
Pellot, 44, lived with her three children and mother just outside Greenacres. But she had another “family” at her job at the restoration company All Dry USA, and she molded a circle of sisters at her favorite hangout, Penny’s at the Dukes.
That’s where family — both biological and chosen — gathered Thursday when they heard the news: Authorities found Pellot dead that morning in her company car.
A horse handler saw the All Dry USA car shortly after 7:30 a.m. and called 911. It had flipped into a canal near South Road and 40th Street South in Wellington.
A towing company pulled the car out of the water. That’s when sheriff ’s authorities realized a woman was dead inside.
Authorities say Pellot drove her 2016 Nissan Sentra past a stop sign heading west on 40th Street South at the intersection of South Road.
The car veered off the road’s west shoulder and overturned into a canal.
It’s unclear exactly when Pellot’s car landed in the water, although that is part of the sheriff ’s office investigation into the crash.
Friends told The Post that Pellot got off work at about 5 p.m. Wednesday and went to dinner in Delray Beach with a friend. That seems to be the last time anyone heard from her, according to Shannon Robey, a friend and a Penny’s employee.
Authorities said Pellot wasn’t wearing a seat belt when they found her body. It’s unclear whether she was wearing it at the time of the crash.
Friends said they weren’t sure what Pellot would have been doing in that part of the county.
Pellot had a “gypsy soul,” Robey said. She lived life on her terms, though “her terms” most often meant others’ needs came before her own.
She exuded kindness, Pellot’s friends said. The single mother
cared for her children and mother. She brought her mother to Penny’s for Friday night karaoke and her oldest daughter to the bar’s chili cook-offs, Robey recalled.
And now her work and bar families want to make sure Pellot’s mother and children continue to be cared for.
Her employer, All Dry USA, set up a GoFundMe account for Pellot’s family. As of Friday afternoon it had raised nearly $2,000 of its $15,000 goal.
Pellot rode on Penny’s at the Dukes’ float last month in the Palm Beach Pride parade in Lake Worth, Robey said.
Pellot’s smiling face was captured in dozens of photos from the parade, Warren said. And that’s how she will remember her friend: smiling.
“Everyone she touched has a little bit of her goodness with them,” Warren said.