A TREE OF GIVING— The Artifac Tree takes forgotten treasures and produces real betterment for the community. The store is located on 3728 Cross Creek Road, Malibu, CA 90265.
The Artifac Tree is Malibu’s local thrift store — a place where people can go to discover treasures, stories and sometimes, themselves.
The store itself has a garden of things. VHS tapes such as “The Fiddler on the Roof,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Free Willy” lounge in a corner bookcase, while a Dr. Seuss trivia game and a popcorn machine sit atop stacks of books and chipped lawn chairs. Sunlight hugs the cluster of tarps and small buildings, and trees twist along a cracked path. Customers step past their trunks, comfortable with the natural intrusion on their shopping.
A man in the corner wears jeans, an oversized moss green shirt with wolves on the front and a baseball cap. His name is Donald LaPointe, and he introduces himself as an artist.
“I paint bikes,” La Pointe said, leaning down to wipe a wilted rag across the top of an antique piano. He said he discovered the Artifac Tree last August after hitchhiking down Pacific Coast Highway. He needed a bike, and he found a 1992 Fuji model here in the thrift store.
He began working at the thrift store in return for the bike, which needed repairs. To finish paying off the repairs, he traded in a vase he painted with a lion-and-lamb scene from the Garden of Eden. Since revealing his artistic talents, he has been commissioned to paint artwork using bicycles as his canvas.
In the past four months, he has received transportation, work and community from this shop. Plopped along a sycamore-riddled patch of Cross Creek Road, the shop uses profits garnered from reselling donated items to people like LaPointe in the community.
“There was a woman recently who was couch-hopping with two kids, and we provided an entire kitchen set and even a chair to watch the sunset go down with,” LaPointe said. “That’s what this place does. They help everybody; it doesn’t matter who you are or what your religion is or anything. If you’re in jeopardy, that’s not a problem.”
According to the store’s website, the Artifac Tree began as a response to the 1970 Malibu fire that ravaged 187 homes. As the community sought help, Malibu resident Honey Coatsworth organized volunteers who would help in redistributing donated items to provide for the newly homeless in their recovery process. Gradually, the project unfolded, and on Sept. 4, 1973, the Artifac Tree became an official non-corporate, mom-and-pop charity.
Maria Landa, a personal assistant at the Painted Turtle Camp, said she comes to browse at the Artifac Tree every morning. Today, she wears jeans, a black tank top and a black sweater, all purchased at this place.
“I spent, let’s say, $15 and I look cute. I’m a walking advertisement!” Landa said. She lifts her sweater to reveal a better glimpse of her jeans and twirls around. “See?”
Landa also brings food to the volunteers who work here and purchases clothes to send back to her family in Mexico, habits she said that are simply “other ways to help. There are a lot of lost souls out there, and this [store] is a way to help them,” Landa said and gestures around two or three times. “The rich people throw their stuff away, but for me, these are treasures!”
These treasures –– things like boogie boards and book–shelves and drum sets –– arrive here through the generosity of private estate owners and other local residents, according to Martha Templeton, who manages the Artifac Tree. The shop purposes everything –– profits, donations, volunteers –– to foster growth in the Malibu community.
“That’s why I believe in this place, because it really helps people,” Templeton said. “You’re a part of the community; you should be a part of this. We don’t pick up stuff usually from farther than Santa Monica.”
The Artifac Tree, which is led by a seven-female board of directors, serves in another way by doling out burritos to hungry visitors throughout the week. They also provide costumes and props for local theaters and donate vintage merchandise to Webster Elementary when the kids study colonial history. Most importantly, though, the shop helps people in need of friendship and support.
“Martha is very gracious and uses the store as an opportunity to give people who are struggling a second chance at a job and an avenue to turn their lives around,” junior Shannon Looney wrote in an email. “She has shown incredible generosity to me and my friends, helping us gather supplies for the orphanage that we visited in Haiti in 2011.”
Looney, who said her favorite item purchased from the Artifac Tree is a gold-engraved, antique pocketknife she bought for her brother, said she “first became connected with the Artifac Tree through a friend who works at the store. Her friend, Winston McCalip, is considered the Artifac Tree’s “biggest cheerleader” by Templeton, and has volunteered at the store for some time.
“I used to be a hobo and I used to ride the rails, so I know about charities and how they’re not as helpful as they should be,” McCalip said. “I’d like to see more people start mom-and-pop charities [like this one]. We’re personal.”
Students interested in conversing with these characters or browsing the store’s bountiful cache may explore the Artifac Tree Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Volunteers who can organize donations, give customers rides to the DMV or medical clinics or simply promote the store are desperately needed, Templeton said. However, according to McCalip, once students come and invite the Artifac Tree into their own stories, they might not be able to leave.
“You get caught up in doing this, in helping people,” McCalip said. “Being good is an addiction.”
