'Donations' of Junk Not Appreciated by Oxford Resale Store

By Alyssa Schnugg
Staff writer
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

One man’s trash is not necessarily someone else’s treasure, as was the case Monday morning when Holding Hands manager Terry Daniels arrived to work and saw a massive junk pile dumped at the resale store.

“That wasn’t a donation,” Daniels said Tuesday. “That was just garbage.”
Daniels said she was only able to salvage four chairs from the pile of junk.
“They just threw it down into a big pile and most of it was smashed up,” she said. “There was just bags of actual garbage too. Regular garbage.”
Donna Howard opened Holding Hands Resale in 2013 on West Oxford Loop. The not-for-profit second-hand store employs people with mental handicaps. Howard opened the store to give her daughter — who has paranoid schizophrenia — and others like her a place to work.
The store remained closed Monday morning until about 1 p.m. while Daniels and other employees gathered the bags and boxes and placed them into the dumpster.
It cost Holding Hands about $100 to have the city of Oxford come and empty the dumpster three times Monday.
“I sold the four chairs this morning for $40, so that didn’t even cover my costs,” she said.
Daniels said she didn’t call the police to report the garbage being dropped off but intends to install security cameras on the outside of the building to ward off people from mass dumping at the store.
“Two employees were here Sunday and saw a truck with a large black trailer driving off,” Daniels said.
Lisa Coleman, executive director of the Salvation Store, located a few blocks down from Holding Hands, said someone also dumped several bags of garbage off at Salvation Army over the weekend.

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