Pony Inspires Owner’s Picture-Perfect Home-Based Business
Home-based businesses are booming, what with the economy bottoming out, and many have used the computer to get a start.
But Jaimee Rupe found her inspiration in an 11-year-old pony named Cinnamon Girl.
Three years ago, Jaimee and her husband, Jeffrey, moved with their son Ricky, now 5, to a chaparral-covered lot on Old Topanga Road. They spent six months clearing the rented land, bringing in a trailer and building an addition with a Jacuzzi. Jaimee started coaxing a garden out of the long-dormant land.
Then one day she saw an ad for a pony with a $100 asking price.
Jaimee, 28, had always been a horse person, having ridden horses almost as soon as she was walking. She grew up in Woodland Hills and attended Hughes Junior High School and El Camino High School, where she and Jeffrey began dating.
Marriage changed things. She worked as a bookkeeper, secretary and manicurist while her husband went into the fence-building business with his father. Then Ricky was born. She got too busy for horses--until she saw that ad.
“Everyone in the canyon, almost, knew that sweet little pony,” Jaimee says. “She had been born and raised right here and belonged to a longtime resident.”
She convinced the owner that she was the one who could give the animal the best and most loving home. Then she took the pony home, very carefully, tethered in the back of a pickup.
Her husband, who now works at building roads for Los Angeles County, was something less than enthusiastic. “He couldn’t figure out what I was going to do with a pony, but when he saw how excited Ricky was, he accepted the situation,” Jaimee says.
Jaimee, while puzzling over how to justify the pony’s feed expenses, realized how many pictures she had taken of Ricky on the animal. A new home-based business was born.
“I started out taking pictures of the children of friends on Cinnamon and then I thought, why not turn this into a business? The pony loves the attention and I like to take the pictures, so it’s working out fine,” Rupe says.
Jaimee now takes Cinnamon Girl to private parties and public festivals. It’s the beginning of what could become a good business, Rupe says.
Not to be outdone, her husband has set up his own home-based business. In his spare time, he makes sculptures out of old horse shoes.
“You really don’t have to be stuck inside to have a business,” says Rupe, whose success has encouraged her to enroll in the Pierce College equestrian program this fall in hopes of finding ways to expand what she has started.
“I may not be making a lot of money, but I’m having a lot of fun,” she says.
Book Buyers Seem to Be Turning Down the Juice
Since one topic has dominated conversation and television recently, could anyone be surprised that there are those trying to cash in on the phenomenon by writing quickie books about O.J. Simpson?
At least three are now in the offing, including Pinnacle Books’ “O.J. Simpson: American Hero, American Tragedy” by Marc Cerasini; Globe Communications Corporation’s “Juice: The O.J. Simpson Story,” and St. Martin’s “Fallen Hero: The Shocking True Story Behind the O.J. Simpson Tragedy” by Don Davis.
The Cerasini book seems to have hit the bookstore shelves first and is creating something less than a buying frenzy. Here’s what local bookstore folks have to say about the not-so-brisk sales:
“We got the Cerasini book about a week ago and so far we have sold only a few copies,” says Diane Ranaldi at Super Crown Books in Encino.
Ditto, B. Dalton in Topanga Plaza and Bookstar in Woodland Hills.
Kay Kami at Crown in Granada Hills says they have the Cerasini book prominently displayed by the register, but that only a couple of books have been sold so far. “I think people are tired of these instant books that don’t really say much,” Kami says.
One bookseller in Van Nuys says his store has the Cerasini book on Simpson and has ordered the other two, but he doesn’t expect booming sales.
“People talk about the Cerasini book but don’t buy it. They seem to have made up their minds about his guilt or innocence from what they’ve seen on television and aren’t interested in rehashing what they already know,” he says.
At Dutton Books in North Hollywood, Dave Dutton says he has not ordered any of the books and doesn’t expect to. One of his clerks says he has only had two inquiries about the books, including one from someone in the television industry who could have been interested in making a TV project from one of them.
Maybe these stores are anomalies.
Maybe the other books will sell better.
Then again, maybe the bucks aren’t going to be squeezed out of this tragic situation like so much orange juice.
Monsignor Could Have Been a Comedy Contender
Msgr. Michael O’Connor of St. Mel’s in Woodland Hills has been a priest since 1934 and says he didn’t miss his calling.
But if he had decided to do stand-up comedy, he might have made it big.
He says that when he was born, the doctor slapped his mother.
Asked about his favorite reading material, he says history books and The Racing Form.
Asked what it takes to be made a monsignor, he says it has to do with living a long time.
He says all people seem to talk about these days is sex, sex and more sex, adding that in his parents’ day they were too busy having children to talk much about sex.
The 80-something monsignor was born in Anonascal, near Killarney, in Ireland. He was one of 11 children. Two of his brothers are priests, and one sister entered a religious order.
O’Connor studied theology at St. Patrick’s College in Ireland and was then ordained and put on a boat headed for the United States.
After serving at parishes around the Southland, he was sent, in 1955, to build a church in the Valley.
“What I saw when I came to the site was a lot of vacant fields filled with weeds,” says O’Connor.
“I got the church built and then the rectory and convent, then the school, library, science building and computer building,” he says.
Today, he adds, St. Mel’s Parish in Woodland Hills is 5,000 families strong.
The monsignor no longer teaches, nor does he handle the administration of the school and church. He keeps busy celebrating Mass and visiting the sick.
“I do whatever I’m asked to,” says O’Connor, who recently celebrated his Diamond Jubilee Anniversary in the priesthood. He has also been known to play a round of golf or two.
Asked if he ever thought he might have liked doing something else with his life, he answers, “What, like rob banks? I don’t think so.”
Overheard
“I can’t find a European vacation to fit my pocketbook, so I’m going shopping for a bigger pocketbook.”
Mulholland matron to visiting friend
