A handwritten sign of half price sweaters and a box of greeting cards priced at a dime apiece greets regulars walking into Daz-E Thrift Shop at 2525 North Lake Avenue in Altadena, a volunteer run store that has been funding scholarships for California women since 1969. The shop was founded by women, is staffed entirely by volunteers who sort and process every donation by hand, and keeps deliberately modest hours, open Wednesday through Saturday from 11 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, so shoppers planning a visit should build the trip around that narrower midweek and weekend window rather than assuming daily retail hours.
Merchandise moves through in the classic thrift rhythm, clothing, fabrics, jackets, housewares, and the odd curated find, all donated by the community and priced to turn over quickly so new stock keeps arriving. Seasonal promotions are part of the shops personality rather than an afterthought: a recent buy one get one clothing deal ran through mid May, and staff regularly mark down fabrics, jackets, sweaters, and other categories to half price to clear shelf space. Seniors get an extra incentive to make Thursdays their day, with a 10 percent discount offered specifically to non business seniors who shop then.
What distinguishes Daz-E from a typical secondhand storefront is where the money goes. Every dollar the shop takes in over the counter cycles back into scholarships awarded to local women, a mission that has run continuously since the store opened its doors in 1969 and has adapted as new needs have emerged in the community. Most recently, the organization awarded ten separate 1,000 dollar scholarships to women in the area, including a dedicated award track created specifically for women affected by the Eaton Fire, a direct and fast response built to support recovery and resilience rather than waiting for a future funding cycle. That willingness to redirect scholarship dollars toward an immediate community crisis, on top of the standing general scholarship program, is the kind of hyperlocal responsiveness a chain thrift store simply is not built to offer.
Donors are welcome to drop off items during open store hours without an appointment, and the shop maintains a donation guide spelling out what it can and cannot accept so that volunteers spend their limited hours sorting usable goods rather than turning away carloads of items that cannot be resold. A community newsletter keeps regular shoppers and donors up to date on sales, scholarship announcements, and shop needs, reinforcing the sense that this is less a retail transaction than an ongoing neighborhood project that happens to run out of a storefront on Lake Avenue.
For anyone in Altadena or the wider San Gabriel Valley looking for secondhand clothing and household goods with a direct, visible line to local scholarship funding and Eaton Fire recovery support, Daz-E Thrift Shop on North Lake Avenue has been that resource, run entirely by volunteers, since 1969.
