WHEATLAND – Wheatland certainly has some eclectic shops downtown where you can purchase anything from drinks to clothing and soup to nuts.

After 15 years of service, the servant who ran the Community Thrift Store on Gilchrist, Marge Scholten has retired and as of January of this year there was a question as to whether the thrift store was going to continue or go by the wayside. Although Scholten will still oversee the Used Furniture Etc. store at 719 9th Street and owns the building where the newly acquired thrift store is, her work with the store she incepted in 2008 has come to a close.

The store located at 866 Gilchrist Street has been purchased by Melissa Borel, Dana Prince and Miriam (just… Miriam) and the new store is now open for business.

Scholten had worked the Community Thrift Store strictly on a volunteer basis although she hired and paid employees that worked there. She donated most of the profits to help transport patients who needed dialysis back and forth to their dialysis centers. The money paid for gas, van upkeep and per diem for the van drivers. According to a sheet circulated by Pastor Joshua Bruns, pastor of Covenant Lutheran Church, the operation revenue was approximately $6,000 per month and the all the revenue went to expenses.

The essence of the store remains the same as the new owners hope to make it a place where some of the proceeds can go to help people in need throughout the community.

Unlike Scholten who had the covering of Covenant Lutheran Church in Wheatland, Borel and Prince and Miriam are taking it on – all on their own.

“We are renting the building from Marge,” Borel said. “We purchased all the inventory and we busted our butts last week to get it all reorganized and ready for our opening. We we first considered this venture, we knew that it was no longer an open store and that it had been closed for a couple of months. Both Dana and I met at Cowboy Challenge and the jobs we procured after we left there were not what we were looking for and we were not happy. One day, sporadically I said, Dana, let’s do this.”

The women pooled their resources and made the leap of faith and an investment. It is still being run as a nonprofit and though they have not figured out all the financial logistics, they have started from square one and have hit the ground running.

At this time, the only marketing that has been done has been by word-of-mouth and Facebook and already the word has spread quickly as after only a short time, there have been many people coming through their doors.

“We have had constant traffic all day long, every day,” Borel said. “It’s been kinda fun to see how excited people are that walk in. So far, we’ve only changed the front part of the store. Also, it’s not a consignment store, but we work strictly on donations.”

The store officially opened March 6 under the new name of Trudy’s Treasures and Thrift Store. The name comes from a very special pet that is owned by Borel.

“Melissa has the most beautiful, photogenic chicken named Trudy,” Prince said. “She has a notoriety most chickens only dream of. Trudy's Treasure and Thift Store is just such a catchy name, isn't it?”

Borel and Prince were both on staff at Wyoming Cowboy Challenge at Camp Guernsey up until the time that the military eradicated the school and the program from Guernsey.

Although both women worked in Guernsey, they are both residents of Wheatland.

Prince was born in Bismarck, North Dakota, but her family moved to Wheatland when she was very young. She attended Wheatland schools and then graduated from WHS in 1990. From Wheatland she traveled for her job working at a nanny school and then on to United Airlines and lived in Billings, Montana, for 22 years. It was there that she started out intending on being a travel agent and then went to work for the airlines.

She had gone to school for airline mechanics and then went to work for Slumber J Wireline Service Company before layoffs hit in 2020. After the layoff and with COVID ransacking the nation, Prince returned to Wheatland to care for her parents.

“It was devastating when Wyoming Cowboy Challenge closed,” Prince said. “We found out only 45 minutes before we had to tell the kids.”

Borel is from Wheatland where she grew up on her parent’s ranch and attended Wheatland schools and graduated in 2000. She has much experience working with at-risk children and before she worked at Cowboy Challenge she worked at an at-risk facility in Sheridan for five years.

She returned to Wheatland to be closer to her parents and to help out with their family farm. She also ran “Country Cupboard” which was a small grocery store in Wheatland. Her stint with Cowboy Challenge ran for over three years as a supervisor.

The nonprofit store will have proceeds that mainly go to help the youth and displaced workers of Platte County. The first project that they are focusing on is 4-H and providing some small scholarships to help kids with their projects.

“The biggest thing for Dana and I is getting back in and seeing the people we know and we love and doing something to support Wheatland,” Borel said.