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The power of pawn

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Some come in search of a little extra cash.
Others have their eye on a shiny piece of jewelry or an offbeat trinket.
One even brought along some magic.
But amid the smorgasbord of individuality, there’s something that each visitor to Jeannie Dalton’s Wytheville pawn shop has in common.
“Everybody has a story,” she says.
Take Shirley.
She and her husband are regulars at the Main Street store, and like many patrons, they often come by for good conversation more than any financial transaction.
Today, though, Shirley needs to catch up on both the scuttlebutt and the bills.
She pawns a gold ring in exchange for $50, which she plans to pay back next week – with interest – to get her collateral back.
“Times are hard,” she says simply. “We stretch every penny.”
Shirley says she’s confident that she’ll have the money to get her ring back, adding that she’s “just running short of cash and needed some extra money to get through to payday.”
But gas and groceries won’t wait another week.
During two recent afternoons spent at Diamond Pawn & Jewelry, smiles and laughter intermingled with disappointment and despair.
It’s life.
“You don’t know what you’ll see here day to day,” Dalton says.
With the economy faltering and prices for everyday staples soaring, Dalton has seen more people like Shirley having difficulty making it to the next paycheck.
While Jeannie Dalton, the upbeat owner with long, wavy black hair, and her husband, Charlie, the easygoing manager with long brown hair of his own tied back in a ponytail under his ball cap, don’t dwell on negatives, they’ve had to balance their sympathetic emotions with their own financial needs when exchanging cash for their customers’ goods.
“A lot of people are just struggling to make ends meet,” Jeannie says. “You try to look at yourself as ‘what if you were on the other side of the counter?’”
Things are straightforward at the store.
Sure there are some rules, like the need for a photo ID for every deal and a paper trail a mile long to make sure no stolen goods make their way through the system.
But in the end, simplicity is the name of the game.
Bring in an old Nintendo, sell it for cash and be on your way. 
Pawn off a bracelet, pay back your money within 30 days and the bracelet is right back on your wrist.
Can’t come up with the cash?
Your bracelet’s under the glass, ready for someone else to buy.
Grab a couple of DVDs from the extensive, always changing collection, pull out 10 bucks and you’ve got yourself a deal.
Bartering even works, too. Tired of your old knife? Switch it out for another.
The layout of the store is narrow and long, with a shelf down the middle breaking the floor into two distinct halves – imagine folding the place “hot dog style” as they’d tell you in elementary school.
The shelves are stuffed with this and that and, cool, there’s a Sammy Sosa baseball card from 1990 when he was an obscure Chicago White Sox, not yet a record-breaking, home-run-slugging Chicago Cub.
Look up and you’ll see a row of guitars hanging over your head. Look right and you’ll see gleaming ring after ring after ring displayed under the glass. Dig deep around the shelves and you’ll find vintage video games and oddities like a clock surrounded by doves or a box holding an item described as a “rocking horse porcelain candle holder.”
“We take a little bit of everything,” Jeannie says.
But bury your head in the merchandise and you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Even though it’s financial troubles that bring many people through the front door, it’s not about stuff here. It’s about people.
Take David Rosado.
He’s here today looking for magic.
Just like everyone else, he’s finding it harder lately not to burn through cash. But in his case it’s not figurative.
Rosado isn’t a regular; he’s never even been in the store. The muscular man is a sergeant with the Chesapeake Sheriff’s Office, in town for the week for a law enforcement course.
His hobby, though, is magic. And he says pawn shops are often the place to find it.
After picking out a slippery silver coin to buy for one of his tricks, Rosado spices up the lunch hour when he opens his wallet – and it bursts into flames.
And thus begins an impromptu magic show as Rosado whips out a deck of cards and a few other coins and begins to wow those in the store with his sleights of hand.
Suddenly, it’s not so hard to see why Jeannie and Charlie can come to work each day with a smile on their face even as they hear story after story of woe.
As Jeannie said, you never know what you might see.
“Life is a story,” she says. “I like people. I’m a people person.”
And people like Jeannie and Charlie.
Take Melissa.
She’s here today – as she often is – to look at jewelry. She’s got about 15 rings on her 10 fingers, but she’s eager to buy more.
She doesn’t pawn or sell anything at the store, but instead she comes in for the low prices that let her splurge a bit even when money is tight.
“There’s good prices up here, good people,” she says.
Melissa’s daughter is disappointed today because she usually can play with Jeannie and Charlie’s two young children while her mom shops.
The Daltons themselves often save money on daycare costs by keeping their kids with them while they work. Today, though, they’re on a vacation with grandparents.
“It is a very good family atmosphere,” Melissa says about the pawn shop. “They make you feel at home. They treat you as a human here.”
Take a young mother.
She walks into the store and hoists a TV and DVD player onto the counter, hoping to sell them for some extra money to help care for her 8-month-old child.
Charlie plugs them in, but can’t get either to work.
No deal.
But that doesn’t diminish the woman in Jeannie’s eyes. She doesn’t assume that the young mother was lying when she says the electronics worked just yesterday.
“They have a mind of their own, that’s what I say,” Jeannie says kindly about the finicky gadgets.
The store owner grabs the bulky TV herself and carries it back to the woman’s car.
But having a caring personality doesn’t mean Jeannie is a pushover.
Business, even in hard economic times, is business.
Take David Hafley.
He also brings in an old DVD player to sell.
His works, but Jeannie doesn’t give in when Hafley asks for $40 as she explains that she could never re-sell it for that price.
In the end, Hafley gets $10.
Hafley says he’s “just trying to pay the bills off,” specifically mentioning medical expenses from a broken leg he suffered a few years ago that still causes him trouble.
While $10 may not be much, he says every little bit helps. 
Of course, not everyone who comes to the pawn shop needs money just for bills.
Take Richard Mulkey.
He pawns his 9 mm handgun for $50 – money that will allow him to take his grandkids to the carnival.
Take Salvatore Chapman.
Like Melissa, he usually goes to pawn shops to buy, not sell.
“I can usually find terrific CDs at discount prices,” he says after purchasing a “She Wants Revenge” album and a “Hawthorne Heights” live performance DVD.
Whether she’s making someone’s day with a great bargain or having to add another disappointment to someone’s tough times, Jeannie says it’s the human interactions that get her coming back to work each day.
So she’ll leave the financial doom and gloom to the pundits.
She’ll take people.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .