Gallup Sun

Building a jewelry supply company piece by piece

What started out as a side-hustle for the owner of the Thunderbird Motel during the Indian jewelry boom of the 1970s, has grown into the profitable and successful jewelry supply chain Thunderbird Supply Company.

On July 17, Thunderbird celebrated its 50th Anniversary with a huge two-day sale, complete with cake and customer giveaways. CEO Danny Thomason said it was a proud moment for the employees of the Gallup flagship location.

Thunderbird also has stores in Albuquerque, which opened in October 1993, and Flagstaff, Ariz., which opened in March 2007.

Thomason recently took some time out of his busy management schedule...

New city logo to undergo changes

The Gallup rebranding journey discussed by city councilors on July 13, continued on July 27.

Bandwagon LLC Chief Client Officer Cory Cart’s presentation from the previous meeting was put up for a vote July 27 and the “Visit Gallup” campaign received some criticism.

Gallup Tourism and Marketing Manager Jennifer Lazarz  explained that the rebranding is necessary in this era when technology searches help determine vacation destinations.

She showed the council that ‘visit’ is a commonly used term, whereas ‘real’ ‘true’ and ‘real true’ didn’t pull up any results about Gallup or any other city.

She did note, however, that...

The Gallup City Cemetery suffered damage from the July 24th downpour.

Assistant City Manager Jon DeYoung told the Gallup Sun that 100 graves were damaged by flooding. One-hundred of them caved in.

DeYoung said the repairs will include adding more dirt to fill in the sites. He estimated that the repairs would be completed in the next few weeks.

City of Gallup Parks Director Vincent Alonzo went into more detail about what it takes to recover graves after the storm.

“Right now I have a crew out there — What they’re doing is, wherever it’s sunk in, they’re having to refill and make new grave mounds,” he said. “Wherever the headstones have sunk we’re having to lift them...

It was a disheartening scene when Executive Director Sarah Piano opened the door to the office at Big Brothers Big Sisters Mountain Region at 100 E. Aztec Ave., July 26.

“A co-worker’s doorframe had been broken in two,” she said.

In another co-worker’s office the windows were broken with bricks.

“My office was just torn apart,” Piano said.

She learned about the break-in when an alarm went off at a law office nearby.

Piano said she and her staff cleaned up as much as they could and the windows were replaced by Hernandez Auto Glass.

BBBS reported the incident to the Gallup Police Department, which found a lot of fingerprints and at least one footprint.

Despite...