PORT ANGELES — An act of kindness during the final day of operations at the now-shuttered Haggen grocery store lifted the spirits of former employees on the last shift.
The store, located at 114 E. Lauridsen Blvd., was closed Thursday.
It had been slated to stay open until the end of business hours at 6 p.m. or until the entire store was empty of merchandise, Haggen company spokeswoman Deborah Pleva said Wednesday.
Closure came early — about
2 p.m. — thanks to Stacey Jo Price, a real estate broker at Peninsula Realty Group.
Price said she was shopping that afternoon when she realized that if she bought all the remaining merchandise, the employees could go home early.
“There was very little left, and they had just put 95 percent off of everything, and so I was going to buy a few things and I went and got in line,” Price said Friday.
“I know and care about a lot of the employees there, and one of them, I was checking out with.”
Price asked if the employees could leave early if she were to buy everything left in the store.
The answer was yes, and she said she’d do it.
In short order, the employees on duty “started bringing up all these carts of stuff,” Price said.
“There wasn’t any food,” she said.
“There were a few crackers, but most of it was other stuff like plastic plates and candles and a lot of medicines.”
It took several cashiers to check out all the items, said Scott Fox, former assistant store operations manager, on Friday.
“It was so large that it took four checkstands and probably about 15 minutes to scan all the items that were purchased,” he said.
Few hundred dollars
Altogether, Price said she spent a few hundred dollars on the purchase.
“It was nearly about $4,400 worth of stuff, and I got it for under $400,” she said.
Fox, who has worked at that store for about decade — nine years of which it was operated by Albertsons — said it “was one of the most gracious acts of kindness that I have witnessed. [Price] got a lot of hugs from most of the checkers that were working that day.”
Price “did us all a great favor,” Fox continued, “one that I won’t soon forget. It was great to see that the final act . . . was one of kindness and of love, and it was great to close the doors on a good note.”
And that wasn’t the final goodwill gesture by Price.
Purchases donated
“I took four boxes of stuff down to Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics — medic alert bracelets and all of the medicine — and they were happy to get it,” Price said.
The nonprofit medical clinic, located at 909 Georgiana St., provides health care services to adults on the Olympic Peninsula who have no health insurance and no other health care options available to them.
Price said she is still sorting through the rest of the items she purchased with the help of a friend and is “trying to figure out who to give it to.”
She said she plans to give it to the nonprofit organization or organizations in the most need.
So what does Price get for her purchase?
The joy of helping others, she said.
“I cried a couple of times” after the purchase, she said.
“I had been having a really yucky day, and then I went in there and just did this, and I felt better the whole rest of the night. It was so much fun.”
Former employees
Of the 67 former employees at the store, about 20 have been hired by Port Angeles Safeway branches, Fox said.
“It seems to me that everybody that really wanted to get on at the Safeway grocery stores have gotten on,” he said.
For the remaining employees, “a lot of us are going back to school” before launching new careers, he said.
None of the former employees, he said, has “been left high and dry.”
“There is, of course, unemployment and worker retraining for those who want to take that course,” Fox said.
Haggen stores
In March, Haggen Northwest Fresh announced it would sell most of its stores to Albertsons.
Bellingham-based Haggen accepted a bid from Albertsons to buy 29 of its 32 core stores for $106 million. It announced it would close the remaining stores in Oregon City, Puyallup and Port Angeles.
The Port Angeles store was the only Haggen grocery on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Initially, the closure of the Port Angeles property was estimated to take place May 10, with its 67 employees laid off at that time, but customers flocked to purchase deeply discounted items, and the store shelves were soon emptied.
The store stopped receiving new stock soon after the March announcement of its closure, and corporate officials said it would remain open until all the stock inside was sold.
The Port Angeles grocery store had operated as part of the Albertsons chain until it was purchased by Haggen in late 2014 and updated with Haggen signs and colors in February 2015.
In March 2014, it was announced that Safeway had agreed to be acquired by an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management, the owner of several supermarket chains, including Albertsons.
Federal regulators required the newly blended grocery store chains to sell some stores to avoid a monopoly, and Haggen bought 146 stores.
The small Washington chain of stores struggled to convert those stores before filing for bankruptcy protection and eventually selling its stores.
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Reporter Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
