Bargain jeans, life-changing opportunities
Latter-day Saints’ new Houston thrift store gives job skills and hope
Spring resident Ben Walker graduated from high school right before COVID-19 hit. “That put a stop on all my plans,” he said.
Walker had hoped to attend college abroad. “But no one knew if there would be dorms or if people could travel,” he said. “I didn’t want to take out loans and then find out I’d be stuck at home.”
Instead, Walker decided to take a semester at Lone Star College. He began to wonder if, rather than pursuing a degree, it made more sense to try a different path — career training or technical certification.
Walker sought the advice of his bishop at his congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“You should try Deseret Industries,” his bishop said.
“That’s how I first heard about it,” Walker said. “They were just preparing to open, and they needed employees.”
The 19-year-old applied and was hired right away at the church’s new thrift store, which accepts donations to resell and is also stocked with new furniture constructed at its manufacturing plant in Salt Lake City.
The location also houses the church’s Development Counseling and Employment Services, providing job-training skills, on-site certifications and individualized counseling.
The 65,000-square-foot store at 8625 Cypress Creek Parkway is the newest of 45 locations across the country, after the concept was launched by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1938.
It was exactly what Walker needed — a place where he could gain real-world experience to prepare for future employment.
He helped prepare the store for its grand opening on April 15, serving in almost every capacity from stocking furniture to manning the cash register. Currently, he works in clothing production.
Each department has a job coach, Walker explained, who helps manage employees’ goals and track their progress.
“They know what type of work you’re good at and what you need to work on,” Walker said. “If you’re in a situation where you need help in any sort of way, I’d definitely recommend it, especially for your first time working or if you need more experience.”
The coaches deliver lessons each week for the church’s “Ready for Work” program — and each session is focused on a skill needed for future careers.
The process has helped Walker feel his future is clearer.
“It’s helped me find a path toward what I want to do,” he said.
Walker’s on-the-job training exemplifies how Deseret Industries assists its associates, the location’s manager Dale Kerr said.
Kerr explained that the building and its 6-acre lot were purchased in 2017, shortly before Hurricane Harvey made landfall.
“This was one of the few places not hit,” Kerr said. “And this became disaster headquarters.”
The location transformed into a command center for storm-relief efforts. The seven loading docks came in handy, Kerr added, as delivery trucks, equipment and donations rolled in.
Kerr was working at a Deseret Industries location in Idaho when he interviewed for the position in Houston last spring. COVID placed his hiring on hold for a few months.
“Then they said your start date is whenever you can come to Houston,” Kerr recalled. “I put my house on the market.”
He moved to Spring in July.
“Everything was empty,” he said. “We started to put it all together. We got our staff and started having associates come in. It’s been so much fun.”
Running the operation feels rewarding to Kerr in a number of ways — from helping a shopper find a bargain pair of designer jeans to assisting another stretch a limited budget.
“What a blessing it is to be in a position to help people,” he said. “We want to support people. Really that’s what we’re all about.”
Sometimes that’s simply accepting a donation and helping it find a new life, Kerr said.
At the same time, he explained, the store’s associates are practicing customer-service skills as they unload donations from vehicles.
Unlike other places of employment, Kerr added, associates at Deseret Industries are encouraged to move on to better options.
“That’s our whole focus,” he said. “We’re like a lily pad. People come, they stay here and get some skills and training. Then they leapfrog off to something that they want to do and something that’s going to help them to be selfreliant.”
A licensed vocational counselor is on site to help employees set goals and find careers, and employees are even paid to search for jobs.
“We don’t tell people what they should do,” Kerr said. “We help them find out what they would like and help them reach those goals.”
There is also a computer room on site, where associates can take classes online, search for jobs and work on their résumés.
Deseret Industries builds partnerships with local businesses to help place their associates in new jobs. There is even a program that covers wages while employees work with another business for a short period, similar to a paid internship. While managing another location, one of Kerr’s employees used the program to train to be a pharmacy tech.
“But we don’t have a pharmacy at Deseret Industries where she could practice, so we partnered with a pharmacy,” he said. “We paid her wage, and she got on-the-job training.”
Anyone who needs help finding a better job is welcome, Kerr explained.
“We’ve had some people with no work experience, some people who have very little and some people who haven’t worked in a few years for one reason or another,” he said. “I’ve even had Ph.Ds. and people with great professional experience who needed to make a career change.”
Kerr said that at one location, he helped a Realtor after the market crashed in the area.
“She went from being successful to needing a lot of help,” he said. “It wasn’t just that the real estate market crashed. It was her soul as well.”
Though employees don’t have to be members of the congregation, signing up as an associate at Deseret Industries requires a referral from a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Interested individuals who are not affiliated with the church may contact the store to connect with a bishop.
“We try to make it very easy for everybody,” Kerr said. “A lot of people use an interview process to weed out. We kind of use that process to weed in. People who are having a hard time finding a job or a hard time keeping a job, we want to help them.”
By operating the store, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seeks to help people find work and obtain the necessary skills for their careers, especially in this time of COVID, when many have lost their income stream, Kerr explained.
“Our whole goal is to help an employee be the best that they can be — and then we turn them loose,” he said. “It’s so much more than a thrift store. That’s for sure.”