The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Orisya Veenker likes to work — which is a good quality to have when you take on two new businesses.

Veenker owns and operates the shop Orisya in Town Square (161 E. Cascade Ave. #2) offering a range of hand-crafted items from her native country. She is also the owner-operator of Ali’s Deli, just across the hall.

Veenker was born in Ukraine although she spent most of her life in Russia. According to her husband, Jim Veenker, at the age of 17 she left her rural home, against the wishes of her mother, and headed for the big city of St. Petersburg to pursue a better future.

She attended the medical university there and received her diploma in nursing. She married a handsome and bright military man who was destined to become the captain of a nuclear submarine, although the best positions available were in the cold regions of the north Pacific. They moved to just south of Siberia and Orisya spent 15 years as a nurse, either in the military or as a school nurse with 1,200 students under her care.

Later she went back to school and acquired a degree allowing her to be a practicing pharmacist, and she pursued that career for another five years.

The marriage was a difficult one, but Orisya, always stubborn and persistent, did not divorce her husband until her one child, Vasya, became a man. For many years she had dreamed of going to America, but it wasn’t until her son put her profile on the Internet, that the dream started to be realized.

“When Orisya got her first e-mail, she was at first angry that her son had put her on the Internet without telling her,” Jim Veenker said.

But she answered the letter from Jim Veenker, feeling that since it had arrived on her birthday, perhaps that was a sort of omen for her.

The first connection she found was that they were both vegetarians. After five months of communicating every day by e-mail, Jim visited Russia to meet her. Sparks flew and 11 months later Orisya was in America. They were married in May 2002.

Orisya started a house cleaning business in Sisters and built up a loyal clientele. All the while, she dreamed of opening a shop and to that end she put family members to work producing Russian and Ukrainian craft items or buying them from their friends.

Those items — ranging from hand-made angora shawls to classic Russian painted eggs to jewelry items made from caribou bone — form the stock of Orisya, which opened this spring.

Orisya notes that the money her family and friends earn from creating or tracking down unique items is vital to them, because the Russian economy is hurting and even trained professionals find it hard to make ends meet.

She pointed out table runners made by her sisters.

“Her husband is an engineer,” she said. “He makes $100 for a month.”

Taking on a restaurant and a retail shop at the same time might be a daunting task to most, but Orisya is downright jaunty about it.

“I work every day,” she said. I start at 7 a.m. I like to work, though I always work. I think it is in my family blood.”

So far the shop has been busy. She attributes the early success to the unique nature of the stock — things that can’t be found anywhere else.

“People like it,” she said. “It’s different. People want different.”

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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