Merchant/Promoter Laurel James Is Always Fun To Run Into

This lady I just met, Laurel James, can probably be described as the Godmother of Green Lake. She might even be likened to Mary Worth, that amiable do-gooder of the funny papers.

Here's the way you get to know Laurel James:

Go out to Green Lake fairly early in the morning and go into Palala, a small coffee shop. She will be drinking a latte out of her own plastic mug.

She will be meeting with her accountant, architect, sales rep, lawyer or some foot-race promoter.

She won't be meeting them all at the same time, of course, but she is usually found in the middle of any group. She has that way about her. Some call it charisma.

She'll be wearing a track suit. Her colorful jacket is too big.

She'll be weighed down by earrings that are not quite as large as a dog collar for a Great Dane.

Laurel is a tad chunky and her hair is the color of a carrot, provided the carrot is pale. She laughs a lot. She warms people up. You instantly like her.

This Godmother of Green Lake owns a store around the corner that specializes in stuff for people crazy enough to run all the time.

She calls her store Super Jock 'n Jill and it is, indeed, a mecca for the fitness freaks, a destination store for people who run, walk, jump, bicycle and generally make a habit of pumping up their heartbeats.

While Laurel is sipping her morning latte and talking with friends, the store is being run by her second son, Chet James, a

34-year-old authority on athletic footwear and all the sweat suits, tights, shirts and colorful scanties that make a runner look chic.

Chet is known throughout the trade as a guy of acute observations and unabashed judgment. He calls himself an "endodork."

After three futile trips to three different dictionaries, I drew a blank. So I called Laurel and asked, "Why does he call himself an endodork? It's not in a dictionary. What is it?"

Laurel burst into laughter.

"He made that word up," she said. "Don't you love creative people who make up their own words? It means he's an introvert."

We're getting pretty close to a real success story here. You see, back in 1975 Laurel became single and had five young sons to raise. As one friend says, "For 20 years of marriage, her life was orderly, Laurel was subdued and accepting."

At first she tried working for an insurance company, but that turned out to be a bummer. Then, Sept. 24, 1975 - the date is burned in her memory - she told a friend, "I'm going to do SOMETHING with my life, something significant."

So she made a working "team" out of her young family. She did not want the kids getting into urban trouble.

They settled on running because they all liked to run. Laurel plunged all the money she had, $10,000, into the business of selling footwear and running gear - the equivalent of betting your future on the Longacres exacta.

There are 600,000 small businesses in America, and the failure rate is horrendous.

When Super Jock 'n Jill opened the day after Thanksgiving, the place was not crowded. Now they get more than 100 shoppers on a Saturday, spending an average of $70 apiece.

At one time or another, all the sons - Brent, Chet, Jeff, Bryce and Allen - have worked in the store. Only Chet remains as buyer and store manager.

Laurel now has 10 employees, many of whom are serious athletes - ranging from race walkers, triathletes, competition runners to shot-putters and volleyball champions. World-class runner Gail Kingma has been there nine years.

Laurel, whose energy is sometimes alarming, throws herself deeply into the business of running.

She organizes the Sister Cities Half Marathon on Labor Day, bringing top U.S. athletes and running delegates from Nantes, France, and from 16 Seattle "sister cities" around the world.

She has been involved in world-class events in Yokohama, Helsinki and the World Cup Marathon, a preview event for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

She passionately wanted the Northwest to host the 1984 Women's Marathon trials and convinced the Athletics Congress that the locals would do a good job. They did.

With Laurel as catalyst, 10 history-making female runners were instrumental in bringing the trials together through the Capitol City marathon preliminaries in 1983.

One other note is needed about this lady and her store. It doesn't intimidate an "outsider," the first-time runner.

As Chet says, "I'm not interested in being "gear-headed" or in jazzing a customer with techno-jargon."

Only a self-confessed endodork would say a thing like that.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.