Second Chance Stories

Chloe Coufal, a determined and resourceful 13-year-old from La Grange, picked up an electric guitar three years ago and began to teach herself to play.

“I play some rock and roll and a little country,” Chloe explained last week. Her favorite song is Ozzy Osborne’s Crazy Train, which is definitely rock and roll.

Chloe came to Second Chance Emporium in La Grange last week and found what she needed to continue her musical studies: an acoustic guitar.

“I play electric, but I need an acoustic,” Coufal said. And she found it at Second Chance, the non-profit second-hand store. The guitar was over in the furniture department and once Chloe found it, she wasn’t going to let it go.

Second Chance is like that. People come shopping for socks and go home with a coffee maker. The stock at the store depends on the generosity of people in the community who donate items for sale at the shop on South Reynolds Street in La Grange. Items come in the back door, go out the front and all the profits from the store are donated to area non-profits.

Second Chance is operated by a consortium of local churches. The store makes monthly donations to the AMEN Food Pantry, Bluebonnet Trails Community Services, Tejas Health Care, Combined Community Action and the Schulenburg Area Food Pantry.

Second Chance also makes special grants. The Second Chance board made these donations this summer:

• $5,000 to the Texas Heroes Museum, to be used to create an outdoor display to honor Texas veterans. (The Heroes Museum is at the “Old Jail” on South Main in La Grange, just a block off the square.)

• $20,000 to Fayette County Habitat for Humanity, to be used to cover start-up costs for ten cottages to be rented to low- to moderate-income senior citizens.

• $10,344 to St. Mark’s Medical Center in an emergency grant for breathing devices needed by COVID patients.