By Whitney Phillips
Greeley Tribune
GREELEY, Colo. — Just as all the items in Mary Roberts’ Lincoln Park Emporium have a history — a provenance, as she put it — so does she, and hers is one of firsts.
She spent 25 years making firsts in the judicial system — opening the first halfway house for women in Utah, becoming the first female prison warden in the state and the first female to hold other department of corrections titles. More recently, after she and her husband, Odie Roberts, retired from their professions, the couple brought a first-of-its-kind store to Greeley.
For the past five years, the Roberts have run a unique consignment business that has grown to become a cornerstone in Greeley’s downtown. Roberts said the decades she spent managing people and money in the criminal justice system has made easier her transition from corrections to consignment.
“Have the administrative positions that I’ve had significantly prepared me because running a business, that’s what you’re primarily doing, you’re taking care of what I call the infrastructure,” Roberts said.
She said her long list of firsts is due in part to just being in the right place at the right time, but also to taking advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves.
“The universe delivers what you need, and you have to pay attention,” Mary Roberts said.
Fresh out of her undergraduate studies at the University of Denver in the early ‘70s, Roberts wanted to go to law school but returned to her hometown of Ogden, Utah, to gain some experience before applying.
While working in the trust department at a bank in Salt Lake City, Roberts applied to work as a parole officer for the state. As she tells it, it just so happened that her boss at the bank was a highly revered attorney, and his recommendation helped her get the job.
“There had only been one woman probation officer before me in the whole state, and here I come at 24,” Roberts said, laughing.
With her slight build and hair down to her waist, Roberts said her boss joked his only concern was that she would have to make some adjustments because of her small stature.
“This was just supposed to be,” she said.
Roberts continued to take opportunities, opening the state’s first halfway house for women in 1976 — at age 28.
“I thought I’d be there for two years,” Roberts said. “Pretty soon I was there for 10 years.”
Roberts spent all of 30 years working in corrections departments in one capacity or another. She worked as the warden in the state’s facility in Draper for two years, overseeing 1,500 inmates. Roberts wanted to try living in a different state, so she took a position in Oregon as the state’s director of corrections. Over the course of several years, she shifted back and forth the between positions there and in Utah before moving to Boston to work with a non-profit group that ran halfway houses.
It was while she was working in Boston that Roberts first met Odie Roberts, an engineer who had worked on projects for NASA, through some mutual friends.
“We had six chaperoned dates before he asked me out,” she said with a smile.
After marrying in 2002, the couple moved to Oregon and then looked for a place to spend their retirement. Roberts said they looked for the perfect location in other parts of Colorado before deciding on Greeley, a community close to an international airport with a reasonable cost of living and plenty of activities.
“Greeley really is the best kept secret, certainly in Colorado and possibly in the world,” Roberts said.
As the couple settled in, Roberts said they looked for a furniture consignment store, like ones they frequented in Oregon. She said they often sold and bought furniture and other items through large consignments stores, having grown up with the mentality that you reuse, recycle and “protect what you love.”
“As a lifestyle, it makes sense to be frugal, fiscally,” Roberts said. “It’s just part of who we are.”
The Robertses couldn’t find a consignment store like the ones in Oregon — with high-end and well-cared-for items.
Then came the opportunity to open one of their own. Their store’s current location, on the corner of 8th Street and 9th Avenue across from Lincoln Park, was once the local J.C. Penney store. After that company moved its location to the Greeley Mall in the ’80s, local business leader and philanthropist Bob Tointon and his wife, Betty, opened an antique shop at the location.
In the late 2000s, the Tointons were looking to take a step away from the store, and a friend of the Roberts told Mary they should take it over.
Mary Roberts said she initially said, “Have you lost your mind?,” a phrase her husband repeated when she went to him with the idea. Still, they took on the challenge, convincing the Tointons that they would do right by the business.
“Well, it was just something Mom (Mary) wanted to do,” Odie Roberts said, chuckling. “She gets what she wants.”
Mary Roberts said they started small, with a few of their own items and items from the friend who got them into the store. Now, five years later, their store is filled to the brim with furniture, accessories, clothes, jewelry and just about anything else you could name.
The store operates mainly as a consignment store, where people bring their items and the Roberts display them for sale. Items are displayed in vignettes, organized much like a department store. The store retains 50 percent of the sale price, and the original owner gets the other half.
“We’re the process by which precious items can find a new owner who will love them,” Roberts said.
The Roberts rent some spaces to local sellers, one of whom caters to the University of Northern Colorado Greek organizations and another who sells jewelry. The store has mostly used items, with a few new products, such as mattresses. They also sell items online and ship internationally.
Roberts said she and her husband know many of the stories behind the items.
“You can sit at some of those tables and you can feel the joy that has been experienced around them,” Roberts said.
The couple didn’t necessarily plan to open a business together in their retirement, but they’d worked together before on projects, so the idea wasn’t foreign.
“He and I make a great team,” Mary Roberts said. “When we get up in the morning, we want to come here.”
The couple said they make little profit at the store, and anything they make goes directly back into the maintenance and upkeep. She said the important thing for them is to provide a business through which people can ensure that their cherished possessions are taken care of.
“This has been a community service in a lot of ways,” Roberts said.
Pam Bricker, executive director of Greeley Downtown Development Authority, said the Roberts’ store has become a staple, and its uniqueness helps draw people from this and other communities.
“It’s not just a store; It’s an experience,” Bricker said.
“It’s very important to have that big anchor down there,” Bricker said of its location at the end of 8th Street. “It won’t be that long before the 8th Street Plaza is much like the 9th Street Plaza.”
Finding herself once again just a few blocks from a courthouse and attorneys’ offices and corrections departments, Mary Roberts said she’s still very much connected with her past.
“If I go into the courthouse, it’s like going home,” she said.
Still, she’s ready to move forward as a business owner.
“I was in the criminal justice system for 30 years, and I occasionally am asked if I want to be on this related committee or board, and I’ve made a conscious decision to leave that behind me,” Roberts said.
Roberts attributes the business’ success to residents who have been open to trying something new.
“That’s just a gift that you wouldn’t get in another community,” Roberts said.