Thrift shop: Animal help in store

The doors will open Thursday on an Arnold thrift store where buying a used coat will help those born in fur coats.

Buy a mug to help a mutt, a book to save a bird, a table mat to feed a cat: there is no end to the possible slogans for the Calaveras Humane Society’s new 2,400-square-foot thrift store.
 

Though store manager Jenni Roland may not like you calling it that.

“This is high-end donated resale,” said Roland as she rushed around Monday preparing for the store’s 10 a.m. opening.

A grand opening ceremony — complete with drawings for gift certificates — is planned for Nov. 6.

Roland said customers will find Ann Taylor and Gucci on the racks, turquoise-and-silver necklaces from the 1940s in the jewelry case and plenty of top-notch home furnishings that animal lovers have decided they can do without.

“I cannot describe for you the stuff I have gotten,” she said, before gamely attempting to do just that. “People have been crazy generous with their stuff.”

Not that the staff will snap it up first. The store’s policy will be to put all items out on the floor for three days before staff can have a crack at them — and then only when members are not working.

The society began toying with the idea of starting a thrift store about a year ago, as its members watched the Humane Society of Tuolumne County successfully launch one in Sonora, said board members.

The prospect of a consistent source of funds was very attractive for the society, which currently depends on a mix of donations, paid volunteer work, membership fees and a variety of fundraising events.

And as one of those events was a yearly yard sale in Murphys, a thrift store seemed like a natural progression. “We thought, why not just do it year round,” said President Blair Wiley.

Society board members looked at locations in Murphys, San Andreas and Angels Camp before finding the current spot, sandwiched between Big Trees Market and Round Table Pizza in the high-traffic Meadowmont Shopping Center in Arnold.

“We have the primo spot,” Roland said.

And now, just three weeks after starting with, according to Roland, “nothing but a storage unit and some boxes,” the society is the verge of launching its first commercial enterprise.

Roland says nothing would have been possible without the society’s hard-working board members and committed volunteers.

“They are the most unbelievably rabid, dedicated volunteers anywhere,” she said. “You ask them to do anything and 15 minutes later they show up and they do it.”