Journey of Faith Leads to Upscale Resale Store

Sales at Angel's Attic make a difference for the poor from Costa Rica to Cambodia

By: Mark Agee, STAR-TELEGRAM Staff Writer, January 8, 2008
Reprint Courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

GRAPEVINE -- Pat Quirin returned from a church mission trip in Costa Rica and couldn't forget the images of abject poverty, including 30,000 refugees living in an abandoned rock quarry.

"The beaches are beautiful there, and people think of it as a vacation spot. They forget the desperation of some of the people there," said Quirin, 57, of Colleyville. "When you come home to all the things God has blessed you with, I couldn't call myself a Christian and not do something."

Four years ago, she and other members of White's Chapel United Methodist Church in Southlake began holding fundraising garage sales. Today, their project has grown into an "upscale resale" shop in Grapevine known as Angels' Attic.

The store, which opened in June 2006, raised $65,000 in its first year for overseas humanitarian projects, funding an orphanage in Cambodia and a girls' refuge in Costa Rica, and paying $4,000 to buy children out of the slave trade in Vietnam, Quirin said.

The store, on Northwest Highway in Grapevine, has four employees and close to 50 volunteers, most of whom are women over 50, Quirin said. The women are mostly from the 7,000-member White's Chapel congregation.

They describe the strange journey from going on mission trips to becoming entrepreneurs as divine providence.

"It was a natural progression," said Judith Streng, a regular volunteer from Flower Mound who has been with the project since the beginning. "Every step made sense."

Streng, whose son was a missionary in Costa Rica for years, helped organize the first mission trip. She was prompted on that trip to get her church involved by watching a man work while wearing mismatched shoes, one of which had no laces.

"I remember thinking, 'That's something that I can do something about. I can make a difference to that man,'" Streng said.

Then the dominoes began falling.

Two mission trips involving more and more church members. Then the fundraising garage sales that brought in $10,000 in a year and led to a warehouse full of clothing and sundries waiting to be sold.

When Hurricane Katrina refugees arrived in local shelters in 2005, the women decided to hand out all of the items they had collected. But new donations came in faster than they could distribute them, Quirin said.

"When we were done, we had twice as much stuff as when we started," Quirin said. "It was God the whole way. We had so much left over that we decided that we had to start a store."

Started with $20,000 in cash donations, the Angels' Attic expanded after just 10 months in business, renting the adjoining space and knocking down the wall between. The store is now about 5,000 square feet, and it might expand soon, Quirin said.

The effort has been worth it, she said.

In August, Quirin and another volunteer went to Cambodia to attend the grand opening of the Hope Center, an orphanage and school whose construction was funded by $30,000 from the store's volunteers. Thirteen orphans are housed there and more than 70 young students had signed up for classes by the time they left.

"We're just a bunch of novices," Quirin said. She teared up as she watched a video slide show of their trip on a computer in the back office of the Angels' Attic. "It's just amazing to see where our money went."

Jackie and Rick Phillips of Southlake dropped off two armfuls of items, including a lamp. They've been regular donors since they learned about the store at White's Chapel, where they are members of the congregation.

"When you hear about all they do, it's a wonderful thing," Jackie Phillips said. "You just want to help."