I was homeless, living in a picnic pavilion at a busy tourist area.

I started earning a little money by making sage sticks to sell to tourists. To my surprise, people actually bought them. I took the money I earned and bought a couple of balls of hemp, some glass beads, a pair of scissors, and a tape measure. I made bracelets and necklaces from the hemp and beads, and to my surprise, people bought the jewelry too. In fact, I sold so many bracelets, I ran out of supplies to make more.

I hitchhiked into town early one morning. I walked through town to Stuff-Mart to get glass beads. The store was out of the jumbo pack of the beads with large holes that I wanted. Grrr! I found a smaller pack of beads with large holes, and while I wasn’t crazy about them, I decided they would do. I brought them up to the cash register. The cashier scanned them, and the register gave her some sort of message. She told me the beads had been recalled, and she couldn’t sell them to me.

I was furious and worried. I needed those beads. My livelihood literally depended on those beads.

I stalked out of Stuff-Mart and stomped down to the nearby thrift store, thinking maybe I’d find something there I could use. When I walked in, the women working there noticed my backpack and asked if I were a traveler. I said I was (which was close enough to what was going on with me) and then told them the saga of my day. I told them I sold jewelry to tourists at the Bridge and needed beads that Stuff-Mart didn’t have. I was the only customer in the store, and the ladies listened sympathetically to me.

One of the women said she had a bunch of beads her daughter-in-law had left behind when she moved out. She said she wasn’t going to use them, so she’d give them to me.

What an angel! What a miracle!

Several days later the Jewelry Lady picked up a big plastic container from the Bead Angel. At the Jewelry Lady’s casita, we sorted through the contents. In addition to glass and metal beads, we found many beautiful stones. There were large aventurine and turquoise teardrops, bars of snowflake obsidian for making bracelets, and an absolutely gorgeous piece of rainbow obsidian.

It was such a wonderful gift. Those nice stone beads helped me make necklaces for which I could ask higher prices. I was incredibly grateful