Curing boredom & fighting trafficking

Special to Wesson News

Christy Shaw (left) with son Parker and husband Alton.

                Christy Shaw settled in Wesson in 2008 after marrying the Mayor of the town, and its lady has become known among local shoppers as a source of deals and gifts since 2013 when she started doing yard sales with her mother, which evolved into a store they operate together on Highway 51 downtown.

                She served eight years in the military, another seven as a paramedic and, along the way, was a volunteer reservist for fire and police departments before become a shopkeeper seeking to raise money to help childhood victims of sex trafficking through her business.

                Shaw says her checkered career reflects “someone who gets bored easily, and needs to be working on many projects.”

                Born and raised in Richland, Mississippi, Shaw’s interests growing up included cheerleading in the seventh through ninth grades and marching on her high school band’s flag team in the tenth through twelfth grades.

                Shaw graduated from Richland High School in 1996, attended Hinds Community College for one semester during which “I enjoyed everything about the life of a student except studying,” dropped out and enlisted in the Army National Guard.

                “The military was my choice because I enjoyed ROTC in high school with my friends,” Shaw explains.  “It was the way to go.”

                Shaw spent most of her military career from 1997 to 2005 at Camps Shelby and McCain in Mississippi, with a one-year deployment to Kuwait as an administrative specialist for the Rear Operations Center unit, which prepared troops for their service in Iraq and decompressed them after they completed their service.

                During her National Guard service, she also worked on an ambulance and completed paramedics school at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC) in 2004 and 2005.  On an ambulance orientation in 1998, she met her future husband, Alton Shaw from Wesson.

                During 2010-20017, Shaw worked with the UMC Med Com air care and critical care transport service as a paramedic, and also found time to serve the Pearl, Mississippi, fire and police departments, often riding to fires on trucks fighters and accompanying narcotics patrols to calls as an observer.  She also started teaming up with her mother, Linda Hales, on yard sales.

                The yard sales, which started in 2013 as “just something to do,” increasingly, became Shaw’s main focus after she and her husband went a Christian leadership conference in Atlanta where they met representatives from Destiny Rescue, a not-for-profit organization that rescues childhood sex trafficking victims.

“I had just had a given birth to my son Parker, now 12, and saw his face in their statistics and stories they told,” Shaw says.  “They fired my passion.”  A 2016 mission trip with the organization to Cambodia and Thailand gave her first-hand experience with the issue.

                “My mother and I started seeking donations to sell and raise money for the children,” she says,

                Donations from individuals and organizations, including Walmart Distribution Center and other companies, grew.  Life View Ministries (LVM), a not-for-profit organization that her husband had started several years earlier, has become the organization to which donors can make tax deductible contributions.  Shaw and her mother named their growing business C&L (for Christy and Linda) Yard Sales and moved it indoors to an old building on Spring Street which LVM had acquired for anticipated programs that never became a reality.

                Today, a building in downtown Wesson on Highway 51, houses the old yard sales business, now called C&L Treasures, and local shoppers can find, among other things, kitchenware, crafts, tools and clothing.  “Our customers include bargain hunters looking for deals and people looking for quality gifts,” says Shaw.  “We tell them we’re the place for ‘gifts and thrifts.’”

                The first store on Spring Street has been renovated and now offers space for small events – receptions, parties, meetings, trainings.  It’s called The Events Venue and is new source of funds for LVM. 

                It has proved a pretty good way to beat boredom.

What are your hobbies?

I used to enjoy scuba diving and travel, but now focus on puzzles and diamond darts for the calm they provide.

Are you a reader?

I am an avid reader, mostly focused on self-improvement and sci-fi.  My current reading includes two self-improvement books – Let Them and Anxious Generation – The Holy Bible and the sci-fi book Uglies.

How about music?

I am a listener, and enjoy 1980s and 1990s oldie rock and Christian rock music.  Aerosmith is my favorite artist.  I sing, but hurt other person’s ears when I do.

Do you go to the theater or movies?

When I travel,  I always try to go to theatrical performance.  On one trip, I enjoyed Les Miserables and Cats.  My favorite movies are Dirty Dancing and Ghosts.  I also like action and sci-fi, like The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy.

If you won a lot of money in the lottery, how would you spend it?

I would put it into my not-for-profit.

How would you change the world?

The world is terribly broken.  I try to do my part helping to rescue kids from the sex trade, but only God can fix the world.