The movie rental section where Christina will be able to maintain her routine. Insert: Christina Cavanaugh. | Logan Ramsey, EastIdahoNews.com, and courtesy Toni Cavanaugh
POCATELLO – The last video rental store in Pocatello will live on in a small way, only for its most passionate customers.
Although Video Stop has ceased all rentals and is liquidating the majority of its collection, owner David Kraning is keeping a small portion of movies and has placed them in a tucked-away corner of his adjacent K & B Kwik Stop location. He’s keeping these movies available to rent for only a small portion of his customer base, who have regularly come to the now-closed video rental store.
One of these customers is Christina Cavanaugh, who goes to Video Stop nearly every day with her mother, Toni Cavanaugh. For Christina, 35, who has Down syndrome and is mostly nonverbal, going to rent a movie has been vital to her routine for at least the last 15 years.
Now that Christina will be able to continue renting movies, Toni feels like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
“It’s huge because it was a really heavy thing weighing on me … and then to find (this) out, it’s like being sentenced to prison and then getting a reprieve. That’s how much relief it was,” Toni said.
Video Stop has always been the mother and daughter’s go-to rental store, but they would go to others around Pocatello before they all closed. Back when they had more options, Christina would tell Toni which rental store she wanted to go to by saying “Babar” for Video Stop, and “Beast” for Great American Video. This is because she first ordered “Babar: The Movie” from Video Stop and “Beauty and the Beast” from Great American Video.
When Great American Video closed its doors for good, Christina didn’t understand what had happened.
“She doesn’t understand things closing,” Toni said.
The mother explained that it was closed, and signed to her that it was broken, but Christina still needed to see the building.
“Her and I drive over and I let her get out of the car and she goes up and there’s nothing there, and the doors are locked. She still wanted to go in, and it is really heartbreaking to watch the anguish,” Toni said.
Christina was able to move past losing Great American Video because she still had her mainstay video rental store, allowing her to maintain her routine, which Toni said is “integral” to her.
When new employees started to work at Video Stop, they would train them on how to interact with Christina at the checkout counter.
“They ask for the phone number on the account, and so she gives it to them, but she goes, ‘2,’ and looks at them, and they have to say, ‘2,’ or she won’t move on, then she’ll go, ‘0.’ They have to repeat it every time, or else it just really throws her,” Toni said. “They’re really, really good to us there.”
Toni had heard that Kraning may have to close Video Stop for a while before he made it official.
“They’d been talking about (closing) it, because it just hadn’t been thriving. I just kept thinking, ‘Oh, maybe just one more year, one more year for the rest of our lives,’” Toni said.
Toni didn’t know how she was going to explain to Christina that Video Stop was closed.
“I think ‘devastated’ is a really good description, because I thought, ‘How am I going to explain this to her? What are we going to do?’ It’s just so much a part of her life,” Toni said.
Kraning knew that closing Video Stop would cause stress in Toni and Christina’s lives, but it had gotten to the point where he could no longer keep it open. As he tried to think of a solution, he realized that he had a corner of his store that he had developed for deli storage originally, but that didn’t take off as he had hoped.
“That area was going unused, and I thought, ‘OK, it wouldn’t be too much terrible work to just retrofit it, put some shelving in there, and move some of the movies over, and just create kind of a mini video store corner for this kid, so she still could have her normal routine that she’s used to,’” Kraning said.
The manager, Jennifer Klassen, said that Christina is more than just a customer to the staff at K & B Kwik Stop.
“They’re family. It’s part of her routine, seeing all of us. So, yeah, she’s just family,” Klassen said.
While Kraning will allow other people to rent videos from the section, they’ll only be trusted people they recognize, who they know they’ll get the movie back from.
Toni first heard about the new rental section from a store employee who pointed it out to her.
“I said, ‘Oh, it’s Christina’s corner.’ It’s not, but that’s just what I would call it, because he kind of did it for her,” Toni said.
When Toni saw Kraning after seeing the new section, she thanked him for taking care of her and Christina.
“How can your heart not melt when you just see how good they are about taking care of people in their community?” she said.