Published Jan. 19, 2003|Updated Aug. 31, 2005
Whether she's indoors or out, Anna Martin shades her blue eyes with gray-tinted bifocals, hoping to shield the light that makes her head pound.
Just about everything hurts these days. Her arm aches when she raises it, thanks to that Pacemaker cardiologists planted in her chest last fall. She pads around in $500 orthopedic shoes designed to cushion the arthritis in her feet. She agreed to three heart bypasses last year because she wants to watch her new grandson grow.
"I'm shot with arthritis," says Martin, 80, "from head to toe."
With all her ailments, Martin holds fast to the things in life that ensure her independence: her own apartment in South Pasadena, the 1992 Chrysler New Yorker she can still drive on her good days, the motorized scooter she depends on for the bad ones.
And her Kmart.
Soon, the store will close its doors, even the little-known side door the employees let the neighborhood elderly use. The side entrance shortens the walk to a store many consider a lifeline.
"They're very good to us _ very, very good to us," Martin says of Kmart and the employees in the South Pasadena store. "You couldn't ask for anything better than what these people are to you."
When bankrupt Kmart Corp. announced the closing of hundreds of U.S. stores last spring, South Pasadena residents breathed more easily. Among the barely saved was their hometown store, which gives them local access to discount goods without an intimidating drive to the Tyrone area.
But Tuesday, Kmart announced it will close the South Pasadena location and 37,000 others nationwide. The stores will close in 60 to 90 days.
"My heart is broken," Martin said.
There's no word yet on what will replace Kmart, though the location already has appeared on a list that Kmart shopped around to real estate agents and developers to gauge interest.
Few discount retail stores are appreciated as much within their communities as the South Pasadena Kmart. It has a captive audience in the city's residents, 6,000 people packed into high-rise condominiums that occupy less than a square mile.
Many of them, because they no longer drive, don't own cars or just enjoy the walk, get to Kmart on foot, pushing a shopping cart back and forth to their condos for balance.
The customers don't fit into a demographic with a lot of buying power. Sixty-four percent of South Pasadena's residents are over age 65; the median age is 70.6. Seventy-one percent of residents receive Social Security benefits.
Not a place where Kathy Ireland's new line of faux leather pants is going to fly off Kmart's racks. Martha Stewart's robin egg blue Christmas decorations didn't fare any better, judging from the leftovers on the holiday aisle last week.
South Pasadena residents tend to be more traditional.
Martin buys her prescriptions at Kmart, a few hundred feet from her Bethany Tower condominium, and the pharmacist calls her by name. She likes to enter through the Garden Center for easy access to the greeting cards and the medicines.
She bought her toaster oven at the Kmart. And her handheld mixer, popcorn popper, bathroom towels, picture frames and bed sheets.
Sometimes, even when she doesn't have a lot of money in her checking account, she walks all the aisles, just for exercise. She likes to detour through the toy section.
"I have a downfall in here," Martin said. "I have a little grandson, and when I come in here and see something, I buy it for him."
One time she was picking up a prescription when she spotted a sign advertising jewelry at 60 percent off. She remembered the opal ring her husband, Paul, bought her, and his promise to buy her matching earrings during a trip they planned to Hawaii.
Her daughter-in-law got sick with cancer that year, and they canceled their trip to help care for her. Before the daughter-in-law died, Paul got sick. Then he died, too.
So that day at Kmart, because they were on sale, she treated herself to opal earrings.
Martin hopes appearing in the newspaper might help keep Kmart next door. But in a reminder of Kmart's retail troubles, her loyalty only goes so far.
"The only other store that can beat it is Wal-Mart," Martin said, "but I can't get to Wal-Mart."
Maybe, she added wistfully, Wal-Mart will come to South Pasadena.
