Hello, for those of you who don’t know me, let me start from the beginning and tell you my story and the reason I started CJ’s. On June 3, 2023, my son was hit by a stray bullet in a Quick Trip parking lot. The doctors said it was a one in a million chance. My world shattered that day - a phone call I will never forget, followed by the diagnosis from the doctor that would change our lives forever. My son was paralyzed from the chest down, all four limbs affected, making him a quadriplegic at 18 years old, just one month shy of his 19th birthday. He was living on his own with a child of his own on the way; his girlfriend was just 22 weeks pregnant at the time of the accident. As everything around us began to weigh in - the options, the treatments - everything hit so fast that you can’t think, talk, function, work, or just stumble and fall to the ground, trying to catch your breath over everything happening. The medical bills and the remodel of our home to make it handicap accessible so we could bring him home were overwhelming. So, I did what any other parent would do - I cashed in everything I had ever saved in my life and started the process to put our lives back together.

During this time, I got an opportunity to open the cafe, so I sat my children down and talked to them and told them just how hard this was gonna be, how much I was gonna be at the cafe, and with their support, I feel like I hit the ground running. No amount of experience can prepare you for your first year and what it means to own a restaurant. Every hurdle will challenge you and try to break you. I had many equipment breaks, electrical outlets blew, and ruined everything. In the beginning of CJ’s, it was like an every-other-day thing that very quickly ate up my reserve for the cafe. Finally, after the fifth fridge broke - yes, five - my landlord had an electrician come in and replace the box to carry the equipment better. Things got better, smoothed out a bit, and I was able to maintain in a kind of rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul fashion. But hey, it was working, and I had everything going, sort of, until my oven went out and I could no longer offer a majority of my menu - a hit I couldn’t afford to take. I reached out to Facebook, and my community came through; they saved me. Everything was looking up, my prayers were answered, and all of the pieces were starting to fall into place. We even sold out of food last Friday, and I got an extra day off. Some well-needed rest and housework couldn’t prepare me for the tragedy I walked into this morning at my cafe. My refrigerator somehow got unplugged, spoiling everything we had just put back into the store. Everything was gone, leaving us with no way to open our doors today. For an already struggling cafe that just got back on its feet, this was a blow that hit hard. The amount of ugly crying while throwing away all the food hit me hard. Why? How? It just didn’t seem possible. So here I am, writing to everyone out there to help me save my cafe. I’m just a mom on a mission trying to put our lives back together. We do have a Facebook if you wanna follow our story CJ’s Last Stop Cafe.