Over the past four decades, there have been many changes at one of Sebastopol’s oldest grocery stores, the one located in the Fiesta Shopping Center on North Gravenstein Highway. The store has changed names from Fiesta to Pacific Market, and there have been three different owners and two major store remodels — all big changes for a small town’s shopping scene.
But perhaps the most monumental change will take place this Tuesday, June 30, when co-workers and longtime customers gather to bid farewell to Sebastopol’s favorite check-out clerk, Pixie Anderson, after 36 years of warm and friendly customer service, often delivered with big hugs.
After being talked out of retirement one year ago by her store manager Phong Phan, this time Pixie has made it final. Among other reasons for her decision, the Sebastopol native who was born here 66 years ago, says a pending marriage to her longtime sweetheart, John Chretien, on July 11 has “sealed the deal.”
It was 1991 when storeowner Gary Silveira hired Anderson after a brief interview to start work the following day as a part-time checker and manager of the store’s small floral department. One year later, Anderson was named Sebastopol’s “Service Person of the Year” by the Sebastopol Times & News at the annual Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year and Community Service awards. Based on decades of testimonials from her Fiesta and Pacific Market customers, the award could have been won by Pixie every year since if repeat winners had been allowed.
No doubt, the longest check-out lines on Tuesday will be at Pixie’s counter. But that’s not unusual, according to the celebrity girl herself. “My regulars have always waited in my line even when there were shorter lines at the other registers,” Anderson admits. “I love my customers so darn much. I know I will miss them. They’ve all been special to me. We’ve been part of each other’s lives.”
For most of her years at Fiesta/Pacific, Pixie managed the store’s floral department, carrying on a family legacy she learned from her parents and grandparents. The store’s larger floral department was “retired” 10 years ago, but Anderson has still been keeping an eye on the daily deliveries of fresh cut flowers during her regular cashier shifts at the front of the store.
Pixie’s parents, Bob and Gwen Anderson, owned and operated “Gwen’s Floral Shop” in downtown Sebastopol for many decades until her mother’s death in 2011. Before that, her mother’s parents, Jean and Priscilla Phelps, owned The Wishing Well Nursery in Freestone.
“I remember watering plants and helping with growing the plants when I was five years old,” remembers Pixie. “You can say flowers were always part of my life and destiny.”
Pixie is not a nickname; it was a name given to her by her mother while she was still in the womb. “I guess I was sort of restless or moved around a lot in my mother’s tummy. Mom said, ‘I think we’re going to have a Pixie,’ and that was what I was named.”
Pixie’s mother was elected Sebastopol’s first-ever female mayor in 1978 and served multiple terms before retiring back to the family floral shop. After two years at Analy High School, Pixie graduated from Tomales High School and advanced to Santa Rosa Junior College, where she focused on physical therapy courses and some pre-nursing classes.
“Our family knew most of the people in Sebastopol in those days,” remembers Pixie. “Karen Valentine (a future TV star) was my babysitter, and I remember when the Fiesta Shopping Center used to be an apple orchard.”
When the Silveira family hired Pixie to work at Fiesta, she was told she could not check out any friends or family members. “I looked at Gary and told him that wouldn’t work because I knew almost everyone. So he let it go, and it was never a problem.”
Besides the interruption from the COVID pandemic during 2020, Pixie also missed several months of work while recuperating from major injuries in a car accident in 2021. “I wasn’t sure I would walk again,” said Anderson, who now has metal rods in her right leg that make her walk with a slight limp. “I didn’t know if I could work again. But I told myself I just had to get back. I got boxes and boxes of cards and flowers from my customers.”
Anderson and her fiancé have been living on Austin Creek in Cazadero since meeting during one of the store’s remodels when he was part of the construction team, and she was an over-protective florist department manager.
“He kind of insisted one day (that) I had to move my displays out of the way for the construction,” she said, recalling a less-than-cordial first meeting. “But something happened, and we went on a first date a few weeks later, and here we are.”
The July 11 wedding will take place on the couple’s private beach under towering redwoods along Austin Creek. There will be bountiful bouquets and flower arrangements from Pixie’s own garden, a place where she says she will be spending many hours after her retirement.
Asked about her award-winning customer service, Pixie said she was taught “good ethics” early in her life by her grandparents and parents. “My grandfather taught me if you can’t move your hands faster than your mouth, then you need to shut your mouth,” she said.
“Cashiering is a harder job than it looks. I get about 400 customers a day on a shift. That’s a lot of transactions and details,” she said, adding she prefers to load all the customers’ bags herself when time permits. “I’ll admit, the bags have been getting heavier for me in the last years.”
Asked about her favorite customers over almost four decades of service, she quickly answers, “the babies.” Then, she adds, “I couldn’t just pick one or a few of the adults. There are so many, and most of them are on my Facebook, too.” But she does mention one elderly customer named Earl who shops early almost every morning to buy his yogurt. “I know he lost his wife and that his dog died, too, but I still don’t know his last name.”
Anderson says she’s not sure what her final day at Pacific Market will include or what feelings might come over her. “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know how to prepare or what to expect. I’ll just be here, and John is coming, too.”
She said her manager Phong keeps trying to get her to work some part-time hours in the future. But right now, she said, her upcoming marriage is taking first place over everything else. But even all those marriage arrangements and planning will have to wait until after Pixie shares a few hundred farewell hugs with all her “favorite” customers on Tuesday.
What living here is all about. Those special people we see everyday who for just a moment while just doing their job might just change a day if not more. Thanks for this Rollie
Good one, Rollie!