Thrift store treasures enrich community with compassion
WASHINGTON TWP — Visitors at Community Christian Thrift Store at 1005 Annisville Road sometimes travel back in time a little.
Hand-carved wooden sculptures, china tea sets and elaborate Bavarian beer steins fill the shelves. Party games for families, toys for children, and model ships in glass bottles pack the room.
“We do get antiques in,” said Debbie Thompson, who has managed the store for more than five years. “We got this big chest, and it was full of Civil War pictures, Civil War letters from family members. So I researched it. I went down to the library in Foxburg, and we finally found a grandson, I think, in South Carolina.”
This descendant she found turned out to have an ancestor, who worked in a Pittsburgh steel mill. That descendant donated $500, so Thompson could ship the chest to him.
Treasures that find their way to Thompson’s store, which Six Points Church of God of Prophecy operates, ultimately support the surrounding community. Whether proceeds from sales go toward compensating fire victims, covering funerals from COVID-19 or benefiting the Butler VA Health Care System, they serve people who need help in some way.
Keeping the community strong
The store spends revenue to cover bills and keep the lights on, but otherwise revenue goes toward charities.
“Everything is to go to help the community,” Thompson said. “We’ve had a lot of deaths ... with COVID. And so we help with funeral expenses, funeral dinners. I think we’ve done a good job. We must be doing a good job, or people wouldn’t be coming back.”
All of Thompson’s staff are volunteers who return regularly to look after the store. One of them remarked that after years working there, she still finds items that surprise and awe her.
“They have numerous times donated different things to the group,” said Cheryl Schaefer, a disabled veteran who leads the Butler Breast Cancer and Women’s Cancer Support Group. “Debbie will let me know when they get items in that may work well.”
These items often include baskets, which Schaefer said are hard to come by, and wigs for women who have lost hair during cancer treatment.
“She had contacted me at one point because she had gotten all these organs,” she said.
She asked Schaefer whether the VA could use these organs for outreach programs such as Guitars for Vets and Harmonicas for Health, which help veterans and seniors manage their health using music.
“Debbie was kind enough to donate five organs, beautiful organs, to the VA, so that they can teach classes on the organs,” Schaefer said.
The VA is searching for someone to teach a similar musical initiative using organs.
A growing following
The store began 22 years ago in Boyers, where Thompson’s mother-in-law, Jenny Thompson, ran the store along with other volunteers. The shop changed locations and ownership from a few different churches before settling in Washington Township five years ago.
The Six Points Church God of Prophecy, which now leads the operation, holds services at 121 McKees Road in Allegheny Township.
Thompson said her team began collecting donated items at two sites, where people could give during winters and summers. She eventually reached both donors and shoppers in other ways.
“We started with Facebook,” Thompson said, “and people just spread the word. They like our little store, people from all over the place. We have people come from Oil City, Titusville. We have people coming from Butler, from Pittsburgh.”
“It’s just amazing,” she said. “I don’t know how people — people just come.”
