TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The holiday shopping season officially kicks off next week, and small business owners in Tucson are hoping for a flurry of sales.
One of those owners is Maria Iturralde, who went from the operating room to ‘owner and operator.’
“I was a surgical technologist,” she told KGUN. “It was exactly what I wanted to do. I love surgery. I love helping people... When the pandemic hit, my program that I was in, it was put on hold.”
Iturralde went from training to be a surgical assistant to sewing thousands of surgical masks. In doing so, she found something even more exciting.
“I never thought a creative outlet could be a career for me,” she said. “It couldn’t take me any further than just a side job. And that really changed everything for me.”
So she decided to make a career transition.
In January, she opened Chingona Arizona, a small, colorful gift shop off of Tucson’s 4th Avenue.
Iturralde says her shop features “20 local artists and 40 small businesses altogether,” including her own artwork which makes up about a quarter of the store.
She explains that her own work often draws from her sense of humor, which she calls “sassy” or “rough around the edges.”
“The thing that really fulfills me the most is hearing people’s laughter,” she explained. “There’s a lot of humor in everything I make. Everything is very lighthearted and silly and just hearing people laugh or connect with it—because I do do a lot of things that are both in English and Spanish—and so I feel like there’s so many people that can relate to something that I make.”
Iturralde has been running the store by herself for nearly a year now, though she is looking to hire an employee to help with the holiday season workload.
“[Owning the store] exceeded my expectations, times 10,” she said. “I feel like—where [at first] just opening the shop was enough for me—now I’m thinking of what else I can do. ‘What’s next? How can I grow?’”
Her creativity is now not only a full-time job, but fostering a fulfilling career.
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