A knick-knack here. A trinket there. It all adds up.
Volunteers at SACS on 21st, the thrift shop inside West Vancouver’s Seniors’ Activity Centre, are being toasted for raising more than $1 million for their community.
The shop, cleverly named to combine the centre’s acronym, location and an homage to luxury department retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, was launched in 2016 in a “closet” sized space by a committee of Wendy Janz, Joan Townsend and Karen Hardie. When the pandemic shuttered most of the centre in 2020, the group added committee members Mary Anne Dragan and Linda Richmond and got permission to relocate to the games room, where two customers at a time could browse and buy.
Everything that goes on the shelves is donated by members of the community. Thanks to good word of mouth, people in West Van know SACS on 21st is the place to call when they’re ready to part with a product, Hardie said. Anything damaged is weeded out but pretty much everything else will find a buyer, Hardie said
“We’ll take pretty well anything, if it’s in good shape. I mean, we take some really odd stuff, and it seems like the odder, the better. Sometimes it draws the crowd,” she said. “It was somebody’s treasure at one point and it sells.”
A 1970s dinnerware set in brown and beige?
“That would go like hotcakes,” Hardie said. “We turn over the stock all the time. You could come in the morning and in the afternoon, 25 per cent of the stock is different.”
They don’t know exactly which book or blouse it was that put them over the $1-million mark, but they do know it was sold on May 15.
“I was shaking,” Richmond said. “I was following along. It was getting so close every day.”
On their first day in business nine years ago, volunteers were thrilled to have moved $16 in product.
“[It's] unbelievable, from what we started, could ever become that,” Hardie added.
Every dollar at the till goes to a trust account overseen by the centre’s advisory board. Next to the cash register, there is a laminated list of projects, amenities and events SACS 21st has made possible. Among them: emergency meal security for seniors, the centre’s Christmas Party, lounge furniture and electronics, kitchen equipment, guest lectures, renovations and wool for the knitters club.
Without SACS on 21st, it’s not clear how the centre would acquire those valued perks, said James Ray, customer and senior service manager.
“They’re a major fund raiser for the centre,” he said.
Richmond said it’s been deeply gratifying to know their efforts are having an impact.
“We’ve made a difference,” she said. “But we always make sure that we thank our donors, because without our donations, we don’t have anything.”
Today there are 44 volunteers who put in time at the shop, 12 of whom have been there since the beginning. The oldest one on shift is 94.
At the outset of the last District of West Vancouver council meeting, Mayor Mark Sager offered his praise.
“I wanted to start by expressing, on behalf of all of us on council, our most sincere thanks to all of the volunteers who work in a really novel and beautiful little facility in our seniors’ centre,” he said. “It’s called SACS on 21st, and if you’ve never been there, you should go.”
The shop is open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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