Community honors longtime Helper residents

Friday, Mar. 13, 2015

HELPER — Richard and Becky Colombo take stewardship seriously and are well-known leaders in the Helper community.

The couple, members of Saint Anthony of Padua Parish, was chosen as the grand marshals in the 2014 Helper Christmas Light Parade for their volunteer work, their generosity to the community and as store owners of the R&A Market on Main Street.

Richard, born and raised in Helper, also was selected as the Helper volunteer fire chief in February. He has been a volunteer firefighter for the Helper Volunteer Fire Department for 37 years. Five days a week he is at the station training emergency medical technicians and firefighters, he said. The department has qualified firefighters I and II, and is wildland fire, national incident management, FEMA and hazmat certified, the same as full-time fire departments.

“Between medical and fire calls, we had about 280 calls last year,” Richard said. “Our area is from Carbonville to Soldier Summit, to the top of Indian Canyon, and all of Scofield and Clear Creek.”

Richard has also been president of the Carbon Country Club for 12 years.

Although Richard wears many hats, in 1970 when he was 24, he and his uncle, Armand Saccomanno bought the R&A Market. When Saccomanno became ill in 1982, Richard bought his share and was sole owner until he sold the store in 2009. He purchased the store again in 2014 so it wouldn’t close, and sold it again in January to his cousin.

Meat lockers were the initial novelty of the store; people didn’t own freezers then, Richard said. 

Using the skills he learned on his grandparents’ farm making sausage, “we started specializing in Italian sausages and Slovakian kielbasa and garlic sausage for local people,” Richard said. “Word began to travel about our meats to Provo, Salt Lake, Colorado and Idaho. … Sausage became the mainstay of the store; orders for meat came in from all over.” 

Throughout the history of the store, customers have returned from the Italian, Greek, Slovakian, Hispanic and Asian cultures, and area coal miners, Richard said, adding now “we have all ecumenical and ethnic groups who shop in the store.” 

Originally, customers could charge their groceries and pay once a month, Richard said. “That system came out of the old coal mines from the company-owned stores that let people pay that way,” he said. “I knew the customers’ families, their kids, what was going on in their lives; I knew what they were going to buy before they asked for it. After I sold the store, I didn’t miss the work but I missed the people.”

However, since Richard sold the store he has returned to make sausage to keep the meat case filled, he said.

“Richard is somebody very special; he is a sweet man,” said Antonette Burton, as she began to cry, thinking about her longtime friend. “He makes good sausage. I have been shopping at the R&A Market for 40 years. I’m almost 88 years old and they always help me pack my groceries home, and I only live three houses down from the store.”

Becky always shopped in Richard’s store and bought the sausage and kielbasa long before she and Richard were married in 2006, she said. “I worked for him as a bookkeeper in the early 1990s when I was a stay-at-home mom for my daughters.”

Becky also is a well-known leader in the community. She is the president of St. Anthony of Padua Parish Council of Catholic Women and the Eastern Deanery president, a member of the Catholic Woman’s League, and has been a board secretary and member of the American Cancer Society in Price for 20 years; she chaired the Relay for Life, advocacy committee and many other committees, she said.

“We’ve spearheaded a lot of charitable work through R&A,” Becky said. “We’ve enjoyed the work and people.”