Second Chance Stories

The woman said she came to Second Chance Emporium to help her niece, who had lost everything after a nighttime wreck on a two-lane Texas highway.

As she loaded lamps and other household goods into her car, the aunt told how her niece, a nurse, was driving home after a night shift when she saw four headlights ahead on the twolane road. She swerved off the highway, totaling her car and sending herself to the hospital.

Debts mounted and she had to sell everything to pay her bills. Now it was time to rebuild and the kind aunt from Gonzales knew the spot to replace much of what her niece had lost was Second Chance, the non-profit second-hand store on South Reynolds in La Grange. The stories pour out of the people who come to Second Chance. There was the young woman from Gonzales who had just gotten a job at the Tesla plant in Austin. Or the woman who worked at the school cafeteria in Giddings. She found a cast iron tomato slicer that would come in handy at the school kitchen. (School workers are always spending their own money on their children.)

In the afternoon, nine women from P.E.O. (the women’s philanthropic organization) came to Second Chance on a scavenger hunt. Looking for a dinner plate with a bird on it? No problem at Second Chance.

The stories are all over the 20,000 square foot store. Who needs Netflix when you have Second Chance? Second Chance Emporium is a non-profit store operated by volunteers from local churches and a loyal paid staff. People donate stuff they no longer need and the sales of those goods produce “profits” that go back to the community. Most recently, Second Chance made these special grants:

• $20,000 to the Texas Czech Heritage & Cultural Center to help with the organization’s educational mission.

• $10,000 to ARTS for Rural Texas in Fayetteville for youth art enrichment programs in all of the county’s schools.

• $7,500 to the Fayette County Deputy Santa program to purchase Christmas toys for Fayette County children.

There is no telling what shoppers might find at Second Chance on its Friday and Saturday shopping days. For example, Missy Rusek needed a girth for her horse Frankie. “Frankie is pretty fat right now,” Rusek said, and had outgrown her tack.

Of course, she found two leather girths at Second Chance this past Saturday. She imagined Frankie’s size and picked one.

This will make her daughter Lauren most happy. Lauren, a La Grange middle schooler, has been working on her English saddle skills and was missing her rides with Frankie. Riding is Lauren’s “passion,” Missy said. And Second Chance is where passions are fulfilled… and stories are told.