Career and technical education (CTE) and FFA students at Yelm High School are bringing back the Yelm Community Services thrift store that had once operated for about 30 years at 624 Crystal Springs Road NW.
The shop closed down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and has not reopened since. Yelm Community Services, formerly known as the United Citizens Benefit Organization, has still been operating its food bank.
When the shop shut down, Yelm Community Services stopped accepting donations from community members, but Walmart continued to donate returned items or discontinued merchandise to the store. Since there were no staff members there, the donated items accrued inside the store.
“The first time we went in, the aisles were completely full of pallets of stuff,” Dustina Nash, YHS CTE teacher, said. “There were clothes, barbecues, coolers and all kinds of stuff.”
The CTE teachers decided to embark on relaunching the thrift shop, which first involved categorizing all of the items and assigning students and staff to organize each one. An average of 10 people went to the shop every Tuesday and Thursday in September for two hours and even worked for six hours on a Saturday to organize items. Nash said they’ve put in hundreds of man hours and have “a similar amount” left to do.
“The amount of work that the kids have put into this is absolutely phenomenal. The dedication that they have to their section and what they take on is really cool to see,” Lorraine Wikoff, an agriculture teacher at YHS, said.
The goal is to open the shop for a “garage sale day,” once in November and once in December, to help clear out some inventory, and regular business is expected to relaunch in January. Funds raised from the store go right back into the food bank to purchase food items to give to the community.
Once reopened, Yelm Community Services thrift shop will also help special needs students enter the workforce as they had previously run the store before it shut down, Nash said. She added that Cindy Cecil, who manages Yelm Community Services, wants to continue that opportunity.
“We have a site house down here, and some of our special needs students go there once they get through our program. They have a big program down there about sending them to the workforce. [Cindy] wants to get them back to running that store as part of their hours,” Nash said. “They get the experience with money and working with customers. The goal is for them to run it once we help get it all set up.”
Kyla Poland, Yelm’s FFA chapter president, remembers shopping in the thrift store when she was younger and has enjoyed supporting Cecil and her goal of relaunching the business.
“I know how much work she puts into that, and I know how much help she needed for so long, and to be able to give that is really cool,” Poland said. “It’s not just our officers doing it, and it’s not just our teachers doing it. It’s a lot of new kids and freshmen who want to get in on this and are having a lot of fun.”
Myah Hernandez, a YHS junior and Yelm FFA’s first secretary, said the work to relaunch the store has been “overwhelming” at times due to the amount of items that they’ve had to organize, but she appreciates the opportunity to give back to a community in need. According to the CTE staff, community members stop by or call often to see if the shop is open again.
“It’s honestly really rewarding seeing all the progress. It’s a good time to get to know more FFA members and do a little bit of outreach,” Hernandez said.
Hillary Hull, a YHS CTE teacher, has witnessed how the project has become a bonding experience for FFA members and CTE students.
“One of the things that I’ve seen from the advisor side is that this is drawing the kids that maybe wouldn’t necessarily come to an event and maybe they really thrive in working alone on a project or they’re more shy and aren’t going to be in front of a crowd,” Hull said. “I think it’s brought out some of our members that maybe wouldn’t have gotten involved so early. It’s been great to see those sides of them come out, and they really shine in this aspect.”
Wikoff added that staff want to encourage students and the community to visit and shop at the thrift store once it’s open. One of their ideas is to propose to student leadership a spirit day where students wear something they thrifted.
More importantly, the CTE staff want their students to feel more connected to their community and to understand the importance of community service beyond required hours.
“When we set our goals this summer, one of our big things was we really wanted to get our chapter connected back to doing service in our community because a lot of those things got taken away during COVID,” Nash said. “Sometimes students don’t really understand what community service hours really are, and I think this was one of those projects that’s true community service and that’s nice to get kids involved in.”
Once the thrift shop is reopened for the two garage-sale days and beyond, staff advised that it will be cash-only.
