Rent runs about 7,000 dollars a month at the North County San Diego resource center that houses Straight From the Heart Resale Store, and every gently used sweater, toy, or piece of children’s clothing sold across the counter at 839 West San Marcos Boulevard goes toward covering that bill and keeping the nonprofit’s broader services running. The resale store is the retail arm of Straight From the Heart, Inc, a grassroots organization that has spent 26 years supporting foster, adoptive, and kinship families in San Marcos and the surrounding region, and the shop itself carries a wide variety of gently used and new clothing, shoes, toys, and accessories for children, teens, and adults, alongside home decor, housewares, jewelry, seasonal costumes, and books that turn over daily as new donations arrive.
What separates this resale store from a typical thrift shop is who runs it and who it serves. Staffing is entirely volunteer, made up of foster and adoptive parents along with retired social workers who bring direct, lived experience of the child welfare system to the sales floor, and foster families shopping the store receive built in discounts, including 50 percent off used items and children’s clothing priced at just 50 cents per piece. That pricing structure is not an occasional promotion but a standing policy, reflecting the organization’s stated hope that every child be born into loving arms, and that when another set of arms is needed, families stepping up to provide them should not have to stretch their own budgets to clothe the children in their care.
The resale store keeps a modest, community focused schedule, open Tuesday through Friday from 9am to 2pm and on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month from 9am to 1pm, with the store closed Mondays and Sundays. Because the staff are volunteers balancing their own foster and adoptive parenting responsibilities, shoppers planning a special trip are encouraged to call ahead to 760-744-2240 and confirm hours before visiting. That limited, predictable schedule keeps the operation sustainable for an all volunteer team while still giving the community regular access to donated goods throughout the week.
Beyond the resale floor, Straight From the Heart, Inc runs a broader resource center offering court forms, training, a Kid Pack Room, and holiday toy drives, positioning the store as one piece of a larger support system for families navigating the complexities of foster care and kinship placement rather than a standalone secondhand shop. Shoppers who stop in for a bargain on children’s clothing or a piece of home decor are, in effect, helping fund that wider mission every time they check out. For anyone in San Marcos or North County San Diego looking for affordable secondhand clothing while directly supporting local foster and adoptive families, Straight From the Heart Resale Store is a volunteer run nonprofit thrift shop whose proceeds keep a 26 year old family resource center open.
