Puyallup’s Handy Corner has sold, more than a year after owner’s wife was killed there
After 41 years, Joe Nam has sold his Puyallup convenience store, Handy Corner.
The store has become a reminder of his wife’s death.
“What can I say? I’m drained physically and mentally,” Nam told The Puyallup Herald. “I don’t feel like being here. It keeps reminding me of her.”
Nam’s wife, Soon Ja Nam, was killed last year when two people walked in just after 5 p.m. on April 27, pulled out handguns and demanded money. She gave the robbers cash from the register, and one of them followed her toward the store’s office and shot her, investigators said.
Nam said his wife was the one who decided to buy the convenience store shortly after they moved to the United States from South Korea in 1979.
Nam sold the store at 8009 112th St. E. recently after months of having it on the market.
He reminisced about the good times at the store, like raising his two sons in the back room and his wife planting flowers near the entrance. But seeing his 79-year-old wife shot in the back looms over him daily, Nam said.
Robbrie Purdell Thompson is awaiting trial for aggravated first-degree murder, first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, first-degree conspiracy to commit robbery, two counts of second-degree assault and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. Thompson’s pleaded not guilty.
At 86, Nam said he is ready to be a “couch potato.”
He said he will miss his “neighbors,” which is what he calls his customers, the most. When his wife died, the family was expecting to have a small, private gathering, seeing as they were immigrants from South Korea and did not know many people.
To express how he felt when hundreds gathered in a vigil to commemorate Soon, Nam kept patting his heart.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “They are everything to me. Words cannot describe. You cannot buy this with money.”
The new owner, Tanvir Singh, said when he saw the news about Nam’s wife, he was heartbroken. He watched clips of hundreds of people attend a vigil and knew Nam was a good person.
“Three hundred people came by yesterday and each one of them asked about (Nam),” Singh said.
Nam told reporters last year he wanted to sell the store, and Singh began pursuing the business. Singh hopes to continue Nam’s well-known kindness.
“His friendliness is what we want to continue,” Singh said.
