Everyday Hero

SHOP PERSNICKETY

With a year under her belt as owner of Shop Persnickety, Samantha Mathews has learned a lot about her target clientele and what they’re looking for as they build their wardrobe for work or leisure time. She’s put this knowledge to work in Shop Persnickety’s inventory, stocking items that work as well in the office as they do on the weekend.

“I think it’s important that we target a number of age groups and not just one,” she said. “We carry items that appeal to the working woman as well as teenagers, in styles that can be worn to the office as well as to school or on days off.”

Samantha draws from her in-house panel of experts – her mom and sisters – to keep clothing styles on point. She then handselects every item in the fashionable boutique, including jewelry and handbags, ensuring the highest quality and latest styles for teens through mature adults. Her game day line and printed tees are particularly strong sellers, she said.

"People are loving our graphic tees; those are very tough to keep in stock right now,” she says. “People are leaning toward clothes you can dress up or down.”

For everything her first year of business taught her, when it comes to customer service, Samantha has always known how to provide a fun and relaxed shopping experience offering the utmost in personal attention. She said getting to know her clients, their likes and preferences, is one big thing that sets Shop Persnickety apart.

“My goal the first year was to grow the clientele and we have done that,” she says. “We really try to create a place that any woman could come in and feel comfortable picking out something for their wardrobe. We have a lot of customers tell us how much they enjoy their shopping experience and that’s what we strive for.”

An Everyday Hero

The Roper Family words Dwain Hebda images courtesy Tammy Roper

TThe youth who find their way to the Comprehensive Juvenile Services Western Arkansas Youth Shelter arrive in all shapes, sizes, and backstories. They are the headstrong kids from “good” families who bristle under house rules and streetsmart kids from “bad” homes who can’t take it anymore.

They are all different, these kids, yet all fundamentally the same – hungry, hurt, searching.

They aren’t lost in the physical sense but adrift all the same, hoping to fix a heading toward whatever comes next while avoiding the rocks that lurk just beneath life’s surface. For these, the WAYS shelter is a lighthouse, and for the past nine years the keeper of the beam has been Clay Roper.

Since 2013, Clay has been the face of the shelter and of the Fort Smith Emergency Children’s Shelter for more than a decade before that. He was a natural for doing the work many people couldn’t fathom doing, serving with unyielding love and endless patience the kids who passed through, connecting where they would let him, treating all with respect and doing whatever was within his means to help. His work was his mission and his mission was his life, which probably explains how he found the strength to work right up to the last month before his five-year battle with cancer ended on June 1. “He loved what he did,” says Clay’s wife Tammy. “I’d say he had a gift. He really had a gift and a calling for it. Because of how he was able to interact, and I always joke about this, he was the child whisperer. He had the gift of de-escalation. He knew how to be calm.”