An Anchorage costume shop has close its doors for good after decades of existence in Alaska.
Starla Heim, 44, the owner of Dooley’s Tuxedos and Costumes in Anchorage, has been working at the store since she was 18 years old and helped run the business with her mother, Rose Heim, and Doris Dooley, the original owner.
Dooley passed away in the early 1990s and Rose passed four years ago.
That took away much of the passion Starla Heim had for the business.
“And it hasn’t been the same without my mother,” Heim said. “It just hasn’t been the same at all. We were a great team. We did a lot of amazing things with this business and I’ve tried my best to continue that. And I’ve continued it as much as I can, but my passion is just gone.”
Heim said she’d originally tried to sell the business, but didn’t receive any interest.
“We had it on the market for quite a while, and realized if no one wants to take it, we’re ready to be done and figured the best way to do it is to go out with a bang on Halloween day,” Heim said.
While Dooley’s had some tuxedos on display, it was obvious the main attraction for the blowout was costumes.
The store’s walls were covered with everything from children’s Marvel superhero costumes to adult Starflower hippie and sexy pirate costumes.
Heim said the store originally opened in Fairbanks in the mid-1940s, but it has been an Anchorage staple for so long, even she doesn’t know when the business migrated to Southcentral.
“That’s where it’s a little fuzzy for me because I don’t have the documented history,” Heim said. “I just know the stories that Doris Dooley would tell me and there was never an actual date, but she talked about the great flood in Fairbanks that brought her from Fairbanks, and from what I understand that was the mid- to late 60s. And so it’s been in Anchorage since the mid- to late 60s.”
Heim said that being a small mom-and-pop store in Alaska created challenges throughout the years.
The emergence of online shopping in recent years is a large problem small family-owned Alaska businesses face.
“Especially with the new age and the new times and everything on the Internet and all the big-box stores,” Heim explained. “It’s a battle to be a mom and pop store anymore. It’s a fight. And it’s just not a fight that we want to fight anymore.”
The community response to the closing of the store has been positive, something Heim attributes, in part, to Dooley’s support for events for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Special Olympics and the American Diabetes Association, among others.
Heim said she’s happy she’s ending the business while she still feels attached to the community.
“It was this last prom season that I was able to help somebody and they were so extremely happy and I was so extremely happy. And I loved every minute of it,” Heim said. “But I still, when I was done, thought, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore.’ Even though I was still happy and even though that used to make me think I loved doing this and this is something I wanna always do.”
“That’s when I knew I was done, was when I still loved doing it, but knew I was still done.”
