It’s one of the busiest businesses in Sicamous and all the proceeds go to a good cause. The Sicamous United Church Thrift Store is celebrating 25 years in business and, as they couldn’t operate without volunteers, they marked the quarter-century milestone with a volunteer thank-you dinner.
Fred Duck, who was the United Church’s Minister for 13 years, began the evening with a toast to the volunteers. He asked how many people present had been volunteering for all 25 years, six or seven hands went up; when he followed up the question by asking who had fun while working at the shop almost every hand in the room was raised.
Duck recalled everything from the special service he gave to celebrate the opening of the store to helping hand-make the original store fixtures out of plywood. He said the store cost $50,000 to build, a significant amount of money in the early 1990s.
According to Duck, in its first year of operation the store brought in $11,450 – a fraction of what it does now.
“It’s quite a wonderful institution,” he said.
Duck said the surprisingly-busy little store attached to the back of the United Church on the Trans-Canada Highway frontage road brings in 60 to 100 people per day.
Sitting next to the former minister at the volunteer supper was Alice Duck, who has been volunteering at the store since it opened. Alice said the strangest item to ever come through the store while she was working was some lingerie.
“We wondered who in town had been wearing it,” she said, “If you can imagine it, it’s come through the shop.”
“It’s my way of getting out and seeing a bunch of people,” said Darlene Kimmie, who said she gets along very well with the people on her shift.
Kimmie said the variety of things she has seen come through the thrift store in her four years of volunteering continues to surprise her and makes the store a bargain hunter’s dream.
“We have seen everything from dirty underwear to fur coats get dropped off,” Kimmie said, laughing.
Volunteer Helen Pearson referred to the thrift shop as Sicamous’ general store, on account of the variety of goods that sit on its shelves and the sometimes very specific items customers come in search of.
Bernice Hyam, who was by all accounts instrumental in getting the store started 25 years ago, said she has watched it grow from a handful of volunteers to over 60.
She added the amount of inventory coming in is overwhelming at times, but the volunteers work very hard to get it sorted shelved and sold in order to raise money for the numerous charitable causes the thrift store supports.
The beneficiaries of the thrift store’s charitable funds include: the Eagle Valley Community Support Society, a street mission in Vancouver and the women’s shelter in Salmon Arm. The store also furnishes scholarships for graduating high school students and also takes on students over the summer as a work experience opportunity.
Although the number of volunteers and the sums going to charities are rising, Hyam said the store’s overhead costs are also going up.
She said basic operating costs total around $200 per day and the store spends around $10,000 per year disposing of unsaleable items.
Hyam said above all the thrift store volunteers cooperate and care about each other.
“They’re wonderful people really,” she said of her fellow volunteers.