Name Your Price store aims to help poor
| Friday, Apr 02 2010 07:45 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, Apr 06 2010 02:13 PM
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Cassandra Castro holds a sign to draw people to the thrift store at 212 21st Street.
A photograph in the thrift store at 212 21st Street in Bakersfield, where Victoria Delarosa, center, and her crew work to help those in need. From left front row, Elijah Martinez, Victoria De Larosa, David Parra, Michael Parra, Nicole Mendez and Isaiah Vallejos. Back row from left, David Aguilar, Chris Ott, Cassandra Castro, Haley Ott and Salina Ott. Victoria De Larosa runs the thrift store for Dave Assaly.
Dave Assaly has a long, scraggly beard and is perennially caked in filth from rifling through trash bins, but few can say his name without smiling.
Assaly runs what could loosely be called a chain of three thrift stores. At two of them, merchandise has no price tag. Customers just make an offer, and it's usually accepted.
Or sometimes, Assaly haggles them down. Down. Not up.
"I had one lady come in with a whole bunch of kids, and she was buying children's clothes," he remembered.
"Twelve dollars?" the woman said, or rather, asked. It was definitely a question, and Assaly could hear the apprehension in her voice.
"I said, 'For you, today, the price is $3.' And she burst into tears," Assaly said. "I have a soft spot for single moms. They have it so hard."
Assaly and and his wife, Alice, own Alice's Attic thrift store. That's a traditional for-profit store that pays the bills. He also helped start the Boys & Girls Club Name Your Price Thrift Store, which raises about $2,000 a month for Kern County Boys & Girls Club Frazier Mountain.
Both are in the same building at 601 Lebec Road in Lebec.
Two weeks ago, Assaly opened a third shop in Bakersfield. Name Your Price Thrift Store is at 212 21st St. just east of downtown.
"People keep asking me who we're affiliated with," he said. "The only agency or organization we benefit is the human race."
Assaly, 53, sees the new store as part of an informal Christian ministry that he says is nothing short of miraculous, in the literal sense of the word.
"Miracles happen every day here," he said as he and a determined team of volunteers sorted through chaotic piles of clothing, toys and household goods. "Look at all this stuff. And we haven't even really advertised. People just heard about what we were doing and started bringing me things."
Assaly's goal is to make enough money to cover rent, the light bill and eventually payroll, but not much more than that. The point isn't so much to make a profit as it is to get things that would otherwise be discarded into the hands of the desperately poor and needy.
Homeless people, single moms, men newly released from prison, anybody who can't afford clothes, shoes, a toaster or a toy can come in, give whatever they can afford to pay, and take what they need.
"You'd think people would try to take advantage, but you'd be surprised how generous they are," said Victoria De Larosa, manager of the new store in Bakersfield.
About half of the merchandise is donated by families and businesses. The rest is retrieved from trash bins behind stores and restaurants in wealthy neighborhoods.
Assaly is proud to call himself a professional Dumpster diver. He is appalled daily at how much perfectly good stuff is thrown away, and his voice trembles with rage when he thinks of it headed to a landfill instead of helping others.
"There are stores and restaurants that will destroy things they don't want before they will allow anyone else to benefit from them because they're worried about getting sued and don't want the liability," Assaly said. "At the same time, not five blocks from here I could show you people who are going to bed hungry, and others who don't have a bed."
Assaly paused and wiped a tear. "I'm sorry. I'm sensitive. I get all worked up."
Some businesses, after learning why Assaly is forever digging through their trash, set things aside for him.
"We give him whatever we can't sell, especially the big stuff because he's got a truck," said Candace Huskey, manager of Shelter on the Hill, a Frazier Park thrift store raising money to build an animal shelter.
Others less appreciative of Assaly's one-man recycling effort ask authorities to put a stop to him, but it rarely deters him. Just makes him more discreet.
"Just because something is legal or illegal doesn't mean it's right or wrong," he said. "Two hundred years ago it was legal to own another human being. That didn't make it right."
For Assaly, this work is a calling. Good for the environment. Good for the poor. Good for his soul.
Assaly regularly asks customers for permission to pray over them. Most say yes.
Colleen Stockman agreed when she came into the Bakersfield store last week to buy fabric for sewing. Assaly saw her browsing and remarked that she looked like she was dressed for a job interview.
"I said, 'Yes, as a matter of fact I am. I'm unemployed.'" Stockman recalled. "So he grabs me with those weathered hands and says, 'Colleen, do you mind if I pray with you?' I said, 'Sure, I could always use some prayers.'
"Afterward, he asked me to keep him posted if I found anything, so when I got a job taking surveys, I stopped by to let him know and say thank you. I was really drawn to this place that day. At the time I didn't know why. Now I know why."
That's how Assaly's friends and co-workers talk about him. With an almost mystical reverence. But he's quick to point out it's not him, but God working through him.
"Jesus is off the cross and working hard here," he said.
Don't believe him, he taunted, puffing his chest proudly. Look at the Easter Egg hunt he has organized for nine years running at Frazier Mountain Park.
"We put out maybe 30 or 40 tubs of toys and tell the kids, 'Take whatever you want. Free.' We might have 300 to 500 kids every year, but we've never, ever run out of toys. Not once. God always provides."
Kristina Graves, program director at the Boys & Girls Club, said Assaly has a magnetism that makes things happen.
"He's crazy. He's great. He's awesome," she said.
The manager of the Bakersfield store, De Larosa, is a 44-year-old single mother of seven who is studying to be a substance abuse counselor. For now, she isn't paid for managing the store, but that may change if it's profitable.
"I made some bad choices in my life. I've had a lot of struggles, but I got custody of my kids back and now I want to help others," De Larosa said.
"A lot of places, you go and you can't afford something and it's embarrassing. They make you feel bad," DeLarosa said. "Dave's not like that. He's always respectful and humble.
"I tell him he's like an angel. His values and principles are really inspiring. This is so much more than a store. There's a lot of healing going on here."
