Store owner manages despite mild form of autism
| Wednesday, Dec 31 2008 08:10 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:48 PM
The Kern Autism Networkhosts monthly support group meetings for families affected by autism, and will host a conference with vendors and speakers Feb. 27 at the Marriott Hotel. Registration opens Jan. 1.
For information, call 588-4235 or log onto www.kernautism.org
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Images
John Harte / The Californian Gabrielle Lopez in her downtown store Bad Girl Designs. She makes many of the items in the store, including cigar box purses and bath and beauty products. CQ
John Harte / The Californian Gabrielle Lopez in her downtown store Bad Girl Designs. She makes many of the items in the store, including cigar box purses and bath and beauty products. CQ
John Harte / The Californian Gabrielle Lopez in her downtown store Bad Girl Designs. She makes many of the items in the store, including cigar box purses and bath and beauty products. CQ
John Harte / The Californian Gabrielle Lopez in her downtown store Bad Girl Designs. She makes many of the items in the store, including cigar box purses and bath and beauty products and key chains. CQ
It takes patience to have a conversation with businesswoman Gabrielle Lopez. She talks a mile a minute, rarely makes eye contact and frequently goes off on tangents.
These tendencies might inhibit a person in sales, but despite living with Asperger’s Syndrome and attention deficit disorder, Gabrielle is determined to make a success of Bad Girl Designs, the downtown boutique where she sells vintage clothes and pop culture-inspired accessories she makes, herself.
Gabrielle hawks merchandise in her own unique way, occasionally apologizing for signs of her disorder.
“I’m sorry I’m not looking at you,” she told a recent visitor. “I know you’re like, ‘Whoa, over here!’ But when I look at you, I can’t hear you. It’s the Asperger’s.”
Bad Girl Designs was Gabrielle’s husband’s idea. One day, overwhelmed by a garage piled high with vintage clothes and antiques Gabrielle had purchased at yard sales, an exasperated Desmond Lopez said, “You’ve got to clear out all this stuff. There’s enough for a store in here.”
There was, actually, so they rented space at the Golden State Mall and Gabrielle set up shop a little more than three years ago.
She wasn’t getting much traffic at Golden State, though, so in October she moved the store to 1511 19th St.
Bad Girl Designs isn’t profitable. That’s not the point, said Gabrielle’s electrical contractor husband.
“Every once in a while I’ll say, ‘Honey, this isn’t working out. Maybe we should give it up,’ and she gives me this look on her face,” Desmond said. “It’s something she loves a lot, so as long as I can afford the rent, she will have her store.”
Asperger’s is one of the milder illnesses on the autism spectrum.
People with the condition are usually intelligent, but tend to have poor social skills. Eccentric or repetitive behaviors and rituals are common, as is trouble with communication and coordination.
Gabrielle was about 8 years old when her mother noticed she was different from her peers. Gabrielle was smart but deeply withdrawn, and had very few friends.
“She just wasn’t a social child,” Barbara Mooney recalled.
It went well beyond typical childhood shyness, but a parade of experts who evaluated Gabrielle couldn’t quite put their finger on what was wrong. One blamed her attention deficit disorder. Another declared her bipolar.
“I knew that couldn’t be right,” Gabrielle said. “I wasn’t depressed.”
In the end, Gabrielle diagnosed herself while researching her master’s thesis on bipolar children in mainstream classrooms.
In the course of extensive reading on special education, Gabrielle came across a description of Asperger’s.
“The symptoms, everything they said, it was all me,” she said. “Suddenly, it all made sense.”
There is no cure for Asperger’s. Scientists don’t even know what causes it, but suspect it’s hereditary because it often runs in families.
Ramona Puget, president of the Kern Autism Network, says girls are diagnosed less frequently than boys because their symptoms too often are dismissed.
“They say, ‘Oh, she’s just shy,’ ” Puget said. “She’s just artistic and withdrawn.”
Creativity is the one upside of Asperger’s. People with the disorder frequently channel energy into making things because they have no social outlets, Puget said.
“They deal with things that are hands-on and interpret them to create something they know people will like so that others will accept them,” she said.
Gabrielle has done that all her life. She puts pop culture icons on cigar box purses, key chains, earrings and buttons, among other things.
The accessories are emblazoned with images of Marilyn Monroe and other legends of Hollywood’s golden age, as well as contemporary rock idols such as Panic at the Disco.
Gabrielle also makes a line of homemade bath and beauty products, including balms, creams and soaps.
“I make things I like, that I would use,” Gabrielle said.
Puget, who hasn’t met Gabrielle, would like to see Bad Girl Designs succeed.
“She’s managed to open this store and push through against the odds,” Puget said. “I think that’s awesome.”
