Jeans Man Fits Into His Task Buying Duds, Making Money

Rick Owen knows jeans.

The 40-year-old North Spokane native has an eye for patches, zippers and pockets. He knows the most popular sizes (27 to 36) and styles (Levis 501s, of course).

“Some people wear them with crotches out and knees, but generally the older and the better condition, the more I pay,” he said.

Owen has been buying and selling jeans on the North Side for more than five years. He used to own a secondhand store on Northwest Boulevard called Ragpickers. Since losing his lease, he’s used an old van as an office and a corner in the West Central neighborhood as a store. Yes, he even has a business license and cellular telephone.

Wearing long johns, plaid overalls and a flannel coat, Owen worked his territory near the Maple Street Bridge last week. Despite the stiff wind and short days, he’s at the lot on Ash Street every Thursday and Friday afternoon and again on Saturday mornings. When he’s not there, his sign soliciting jeans is.

Mornings, he makes the rounds of thrift shops and yard sales.

“I’m at St. Vincent de Paul and Goodwill every morning. Everyone there knows me by name,” he said.

Last Friday, Owen made two buys in a 15-minute period.

Jim Thompson, 57, a plumber who lives in the Shadle Park neighborhood had found a pair of white painter’s pants at a yard sale. Owen paid Thompson $2 for the pants.

“I’m a yard-saleaholic,” said Thompson, who said he won’t resell what he finds to anyone except Owen. “He’s the most honest. The others will rip you off.”

Another man rode up on a bike with a jeans jacket, which Owen bought for $5.

Owen said he resells the merchandise through a Seattle connection and that person may turn it over still again. He speculates that some jeans from Spokane end up in Europe and Japan.

Owen buys and sells between 300 and 400 pairs of jeans a month, making $1,200 to $1,400, he said.

“Sometimes I find more money in the pockets than I pay for the jeans,” he said. “I’ve found $5, $10.”

A burly man with a goatee, Owen grew up in the Logan neighborhood and went to Shaw Middle School. He then got his GED and lived in Colorado and California before returning to Spokane.

He now is married, with a 3-yearold son and teenage daughter.

As unusual as the job seems to some, Owen said it has kept him off welfare.

“You have to be very motivated to do this,” he said. “Some days you stand all day and get nothing.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo