This is what you see when you enter the quality shoe repair store on Saginaw Street in downtown Bay City.

The owner operator is 66 year old Santa Valdez.

He's owned the shop for 13 years.

Santa repairs shoes, coats, zippers, he says all kind of things He has 20 or so jobs to work on at any one time.

Thses coats are two examples... This lady, she wants me to shorten her a The jacket.

So we have to remove the.

The zipper This kid here.

He asked me to.

He got sentimental values for him, and he wants me to customize some, mending some repairs here.

Yeah, we want to do both sides with some kind of canvas material.

Santa is originally from Mexico.

He learned his skills from his older brothers and cousins.

He worked at a shop in Chicago before he came to Bay City to buy this shoe repair business.

His son and daughter in law now own a shop in Ypsilanti.

Customer service is his focus.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I have a pair of boots that were my father's.

And I would like to have them fixed.

They're kind of raggedy up here.

And there's, they might need a new soul.

We can do this with leather.

Yeah.

No problem.

Yes.

Okay, great.

But when are you willing to have this back?

Like.

It doesn't matter today.

No no no no no, it can be a couple weeks.

If they say no, whatever fits in your schedule.

I'm not in any hurry.

Okay?

Most of the I enjoy the people.

Every customer got their own character on their own way to ask for things.

And, that things were interesting because they got the idea.

And I have to capture the idea.

And that's how we keep our business running, which some the customers ask is what to do.

They tell us.

And we did well with the idea, When deciding to fix an old pair of shoes or buy new ones, Santa offers sound advice.

Well, it's easy if they're comfortable, fix them.

If they're not, you can get rid of them.

Santa keeps plenty of items in stock and believes in recycling and reusing some materials.

There are many tools to Santas trade, including sharp knives and strong hands.

And several machines... This machine, we call it 3 in 1, but we use it mostly to cut.

It's a quarter cuts.

Cut through material leather, rubber.

It's a splitter.

Split things so we can thin it up Can make one more.

One more layer.

Three out of one.

Yeah.

This machine here... They call it a, like a stitcher.

And it's one of the.

We use to sew.

the shoes or boots from the inside.

Sew it from the inside like that.

It turns out we can just sew it... nice and easy.

Santa shares his craft with young people who sometimes help out in the store.

Is this a trade worth pursuing?

This is this a trade, a trade which is not designed to be, like, rich...rich But you can make a good living just like, fixing things for people and mostly enjoy helping people.

But, yeah, there's, a good way of life doing this.