Karen Wolf could rely on her scissors.
With them, she finally landed a job she loved, working close to her two sons, and minutes from her home for the best employers she?s ever known.
But then devastation struck.
The single mother?s entire family lost their jobs after working at three of the seven businesses destroyed by an inferno Sunday on Main Street in Mount Airy.
Wolf, 41, worked as a stylist at Do or Dye hair salon; her son Nicholas Colvin, 20, cooked at Old Towne Restaurant; and her other son, Luke Colvin, 16, cooked at Laurienzo?s Brick Oven Cafe.
It threatened to tear herfamily apart with no means of support to pay for her mortgage, her cars and food.
“I?ll just do whatever I can,” Wolf says, holding back tears. “I?ve been in worse situations.”
Her father committed suicide when she was 25 years old. And about a year ago, her sons? paternal grandfather committed suicide.
“I?ve had a hard road,” she says. “Thing is, we?re still here, and we still have each other.”
She turns, looking away for a few seconds in an attempt to compose herself.
The three were just becoming a family, living and working together, because Nicholas lived with his father in Arbutus, until about two years ago.
“We kind of just had got settled down ? and then this,” says Nicholas, a student at Frederick Community College. “It was shocking at first, and I guess because it all happened at once, we all had something in common.”
His mother?s clients followed her from Laurel, he says, when she moved a few years ago with Luke.
“Right now it?s just weird, because my mom?s out of a job and there?s no other place she wants to work,” Luke says.
He?s mostly concerned for his mother, he says, but is able to press on, and he?s already picked up an application for Pizza Hut, eager to continue saving money to buy his first car.
“I guess I?m outgoing,” Luke says. “I just try to keep my mind set and not let it bother me.”
He takes after his mother, who is not letting any fire knock her down, and she?s not working anywhere else. She?s stronger than those collapsed buildings.
If she takes a part-time job while Main Street rebuilds, Wolf said she?ll donate half the money she makes to the seven owners who lost their businesses and the five families who lost their apartments.
Those people lost everything, she says. “I just lost my scissors.”
