When the owner of a local coffee shop in Oregon heard that the owner of a competing coffee shop was terminally ill, she closed her business for the day to step in to help.
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Pixie Adams, the owner of Moonlight Coffee House in Oak Grove, said she was doing the right thing.
Dave and Tina McAdams live next to Adams’ coffee shop and the trio became friends before the couple opened their own shop, The Local Company, earlier this year.
“I feel like it’s so easy to get caught up in the competition in business," Adams told InsideEdition.com. "I wanted to do something for them that I knew was going to make a difference in more than a superficial way. To me, it will always be community over competition, and friendship over business.”
Dave, who beat cancer twice before, got sick again this year. So, his wife, Tina, quit her full-time job to help him run the shop.
Recently though, his cancer progressed. Doctors gave him two months to live and he’s now at home on hospice care.
With Tina needing to help Dave at home, it became increasingly difficult to also run their coffee shop, she said. Friends and family chipped in to help out.
Adams, a breast cancer survivor herself, understood how hard it is to run a business in its early stages, especially considering the couple’s circumstances, so she offered to work for them, free of charge, for a day as part of a fundraiser.
“Being a small business, we generally don’t have a lot of financial reserves,” Adams said. “We don’t have paid time off. The worry is, what happens if we get sick, or something happens to us, there isn’t a big safety net. It was important to me to do something that would financially help them.”
Last week, Adams shut down her shop for a day to run the couple’s shop and broke sales records for her competitor.
“When she offered, we were so honored that she would put her own business on hold for a day to help ours,” Tina said. “Pixie is well-known in our community for raising awareness and has a very large following. We knew her efforts would not go unrewarded.
“When we had a record day of sales and a large amount donated as well, it was so great to know how much our community truly cares,” Tina added.
Through GoFundMe, the couple has raised more than $17,000. Dave and Tina are also selling one-pound coffee bags to raise funds.
“The outpouring of support has been life-giving to Dave,” Tina said.
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