Fresh off a mastectomy for breast cancer the week before Thanksgiving, San Anselmo jeweler Jean Jung came up with an idea that folded the experience into a business plan. Jung, a colorful Fairfax resident who turned 60 Tuesday, developed what may be a one-of-a-kind promotion that continues through Valentine's Day: a breast cancer survivor sale. Anyone who has cancer - not just breast cancer - or has survived it will get an additional 5 to 10 percent off at her shop, Gold Dreams, in the Red Hill Shopping Center.
"With a little latitude thrown in, since I'm in charge," she said. "I burst out laughing," friend Peigin Barrett said. "Who puts a sign out like that?
" Jung was raised in Wisconsin and put herself through college working in a jewelry store, where she sold merchandise and repaired it. Years of cold, stormy weather made her long for a warmer climate, and graduation coincided with the thriving Bay Area hippie movement. "I came out in 1968," she said.
"Enough said." Jung took a job making jewelry in San Francisco that she parlayed into a wholesaling business of her own. Clients included the upscale department
"It's always been my goal to own my own business," she said. Jung moved to Marin in 1976 and continued with the wholesale business, but her goal was a retail store. In 1982, she opened Gold Dreams in San Francisco.
Shortly thereafter, one of Jung's wholesale clients in San Anselmo decided to retire so she bought the business and shuttered the Gold Dreams in the city. Since then, she has used her jewelry-making to express a
One of her favorite pieces is a necklace made of half a dozen strands of freshwater pearls that connect to an 18-carat gold sea otter on his back clutching an abalone pearl on his tummy. The otter is surrounded by a bed of pearls that, on the back, are connected by tiny starfish. Although she sells white diamonds and traditional stones, much of her work involves unusual colors or stones such as a watermelon tourmaline.
One necklace features a deep green moldavite, which is the only extraterrestrial gem stone and comes from a meteor. "It's the quality of the color that interests me, not what it is," she said. Life was clipping along when Jung felt a lump in one of her breasts in October.
A biopsy in November revealed cancer and, within two weeks, she'd had a mastectomy. For a super-confident woman prone to breaking into laugh-inducing cackles, the whirlwind of a cancer diagnosis and mastectomy was a mighty blow. But keeping quiet was against her nature.
Jung said she wanted to make others with breast cancer feel secure talking about their experience and her storefront in the shopping center offered a perfect opportunity. Upon returning to work, she decorated the store with dozens of pink rubber duckies, pink lights in the window display and pink Christmas bulbs. There's even a large sign inside featuring a personal statement that starts out, "I recently had a mastectomy due to breast cancer.
" Women have come in to talk about mastectomies they've had and a man even shared the story of his recent prostate surgery. Friends have confided that they've had cancer, but never told her. "Some of them I've known for a long time and I had no idea," she said.
Janice Barlow, executive director of local cancer nonprofit organization Zero Breast Cancer, said the special program, while not entirely unique, "fits a pattern in our community of how people can contribute back." "I think there's a variety of ways people can contribute based on who they are or how they can contribute," Barlow said. Speaking of Jung, she said, "In her case it's kind of a more novel idea.
It's in the holiday season, but I think it's what people in this community do out of the goodness of their heart." Jung's approach to cancer came as no surprise to Barrett, former director of the Marine Mammal Center and the nonprofit Love Is The Answer, or LITA, which helps homebound seniors. Barrett met Jung last New Year's Day, when she ran down to San Anselmo Avenue to help merchants clean up after the flood.
The store Antique Timepieces looked particularly hard hit so she went inside to see if anyone needed help. Instead of the owner, she met Jung, who was searching for merchandise in the mud when she wasn't handing out shovels, food and water she'd purchased with her own money. Barrett said Jung, who kept her own store closed for several days to help the devastated merchants, put Barrett to work and they've remained friends ever since.
"She's the most amazing woman," Barrett said. Barrett was among the friends Jung invited to her 60th birthday party, which doubled as a coming-out party for three new wigs her daughter and husband bought in preparation for chemotherapy that starts Thursday. She bought wigs in red, platinum and lavender that will replace her long, sun-kissed locks.
"I thought I'd prepare them," she said. Despite the upcoming treatment, Jung plans to be in the store as often as possible. And for those last-minute shoppers who come in the store, there's one suggestion that comes ahead of jewelry.
"I think one of the best gifts for Christmas is a mammogram," she said.
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