‘I have to work’: Huntington Beach tailor and her daughter ask for help
Joyce Cho may not speak perfect English, but the Korean American owner of Peggy’s Perfect Fit tailor shop in Huntington Beach needs just one word to describe her mindset lately.
“Afraid,” Cho said Tuesday from her store, located in the shopping center on the southwest corner of Goldenwest Avenue and Bolsa Street.
Cho goes by “Peggy,” simply because everyone started calling her that when she took over the store nine years ago. Life has not been easy for her during the coronavirus pandemic.
Peggy’s Perfect Fit was closed for a couple of months during the pandemic, and Cho, 63, has continued to have trouble paying the rent.
Her daughter, Sarah Cho, decided to do something about it.
She started a GoFundMe to try to save her mother’s business. The link is www.gofundme.com/f/help-peggys-pay-rent, and that’s just what mother and daughter are asking for — some help to keep the business afloat.
“I don’t think [my mom] likes asking for help,” said Sarah, who primarily works in Los Angeles as an insurance adjuster. “She doesn’t even know what GoFundMe is. She told me not to do it … I had to put down my pride, I guess, too, and put it up on my social media and tell my co-workers.”
Sarah said the landlord of the quiet complex, which has a couple of abandoned storefronts, did offer two months of discounted rent last year. But the balance that the Chos were unable to pay in 2020 was deferred to their 2021 rent, she said, creating a hardship.
Prior to last year, Sarah said the business was never late on a rent payment. The base rent is $2,000 a month, plus utilities.
“They have insurance to pay, they have workers to pay,” Sarah Cho said of the landlords. “They need to keep their business open as well. But I wish they would be a little bit more lenient on the tenants. I’m always furious about it, but [Joyce] is always trying to calm me down. She says, ‘Everyone needs to eat.’ I get it.”
Mother and daughter live together in Anaheim, but Joyce works alone at Peggy’s the vast majority of the time. Sometimes just the two family dogs — an 11-year-old shih tzu and poodle mix named Chewy and a 10-year-old Yorkshire terrier named Minnie — keep her company.
Even when the store was closed, Peggy would often come in and make face masks and donate them to local churches and elderly people, Sarah Cho said.
The shop, which advertises a $4.99 pants hem, is well-liked. It has a 4.5 average star rating on Yelp. But a lack of customers during the pandemic was not the only problem, Sarah Cho said.
Social distancing at an alterations shop doesn’t really work.
“In this job, you have to physically measure people,” Sarah Cho said. “You can’t keep six feet distance. It was a mandatory shut down here.”
Joyce said she feels more comfortable now that she recently got her second COVID-19 vaccine shot. Still, business has not picked back up to levels that she needs to balance the books.
“I’m hoping to keep the business hours, 10 [a.m.] to 6 [p.m.],” Joyce Cho said. “Sometimes it’s very slow right now. The pandemic makes it terrible, you know … [but] I have to work.”
Sarah said she hopes the GoFundMe will help, though she hasn’t really been advertising it as much lately. As of Tuesday afternoon, she had raised $620 — less than one-third of a month’s rent.
Sarah also knows of at least one other method that her mother is trying.
“I hear her pray every night about it,” Sarah said.
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