New thrift store helps the wounded and recovering
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Jenny Collins, the executive director of the Assured Home Health and Hospice Foundation, helps a customer with jewelry at their new thrift store on the corner of West Third Avenue and South Ash Street.
MOSES LAKE — The newest thrift store in Moses Lake began life as a way for people to share medical equipment.
“The thrift store was always part of the vision,” said Liz Burgeis, who manages the medical equipment bank for the Visiting Nurses Foundation.
Burgeis was hired a little more than two years ago to manage the store of medical equipment — fairly simple things like crutches or walkers or wheelchairs — for the Assured Home Health and Hospice Foundation. The goal was to help people who could not afford to buy or rent medical equipment by lending them what they needed.
“Hospitals were not sending people home with equipment, but with prescriptions,” Burgeis said. “If you need it, we have it available to loan out.”
The Assured Home Health Foundation Thrift Store opening in Moses Lake was on Thursday, and hosts not only a thrift store but the bank of used medical equipment as well.
Behind the racks of old clothes, shoes, and old bric-a-brac were crutches and walkers and a few wheelchairs, ready for anyone who needs them. The bank used to be located on Fourth Street, but moved to the new site at West Third and South Ash because the location is central.
Burgeis said the foundation cleans everything up, and is always looking for donations of new equipment along with clothes, kitchen ware, and books.
And the foundation will always welcome cash donations as well.
“Twenty-five dollars to $50 helps with our needs,” said Jenny Collins, the foundation’s executive director. “One good piece of equipment can help up to three people a year.”
Collins said the thrift store arose as a way to support the medical equipment bank and the Moses Lake community.
“This is a good location,” she said. “We are devoted to Grant, Adams, and Lincoln counties.”
Candace Chaney, a foundation hospice nurse based in Olympia who said she visits Moses Lake about once a month, told a small group of employees and volunteers to be patient, kind, and understanding with customers because many of them might be dealing with trauma as well.
“It’s easy to forget where we do what we do,” Chaney explained. “Many of the people who come in here may be dealing with grief and loss, and great stress. We can’t fix it, but we can listen, and that means a lot.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.