Covid Hits One Family, Knocks Out Two Small Businesses

Dec. 21—It's Martinsville Soapworks' busiest season and owner Heather Kalisiak is working furiously to make enough lotions, candles and lip balms to fill the North Tonawanda store's shelves.

Her holiday products are usually well-stocked by now but, when Covid-19 hit her family last month, she got behind.

"I lost all of November," she said.

That's because Kalisiak developed Covid-19 last month and had to close her store for a month. Kalisiak's daughter, Talia, who runs a gift shop down the street, also came down with a more severe case of Covid-19 and remains hospitalized at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center. Her shop, the Delightful Octopus, was shuttered even longer.

Kalisiak has since reopened her shop. Customers breeze through the door every few minutes and, when cashing out, leave Kalisiak with words of support for Talia, 20.

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"I wish your daughter the best," one says.

Some have pitched in to help keep Kalisiak's business going during the crucial holiday shopping season. Several people with retail experience reached out offering help. Others stepped in to package and ship orders. Talia's brother, Stephen, who usually works long hours at the Soapworks this time of year, is now running his sister's shop.

Other customers and neighbors have dropped off food and cards. Volunteers, including a local high school group, asked if they could make donations.

It's a show of how supportive the community has been since Covid-19 took the Kalisiak family out of commission and closed both of their small stores for weeks during the busiest time of year.

In online posts explaining that the stores would have to close because of Covid-19, Heather didn't go into detail about Talia's condition. But being a popular and successful store for nearly two decades, supporters sprang into action.

Kalisiak received "so many messages" from customers, saying they were praying for and thinking about the family.

"Knowing that so many people were thinking of us helped us be a little stronger during the darkest times," she said.

Still, she tries not to make it too much of a focus when customers are in.

"People don't come in to feel bad. They come in for their own little retail therapy," Kalisiak said. "They just want to come in and smell soaps."

Talia fell ill early last month and the family, suspecting it was Covid-19, put themselves in quarantine. Within a week Talia, who has asthma, was hospitalized and intubated.

"She got sick hard and fast," Heather said. "We couldn't get her fever down. She was just delirious and turned blue."

Days later, her father, Chris Kalisiak, who had experienced only mild symptoms, was working in the family's yard when his arms went numb. Soon after, his blood oxygen level dropped. Heather, who had begun a fever and chills earlier that day, called him an ambulance because she was too sick to drive.

"It didn't even occur to me that he could end up intubated, too," Heather said. "It didn't even register in my brain that I could lose both of them."

Fortunately, Chris avoided both fates after spending four days in the hospital on oxygen, remdesivir and a blood thinner. He returned home with supplemental oxygen.

When Covid-19 first struck the family, Heather found a friend to watch the store but, as the Kalisiaks' conditions worsened, the friend began to worry about her own health risks.

Afraid to risk exposure from customers, the friend decided she couldn't help keep the store going after all. The Soapworks was forced to close.

The timing couldn't have been worse. Kalisiak had just launched and advertised her annual holiday product release. Online orders piled up, which friends packed up and held for curbside deliveries one day per week. Talia's store, the Delightful Octopus, is not set up for ecommerce.

Heather tried to stay on top of things as much as she could, even when she was "completely out of it" in the thick of the disease.

At one point, she got an alert from a supplier, saying a type of bottle that had become scarce since the pandemic was back in stock. She leapt at the chance to score them.

"I was trying to order stuff with a 101.5 fever like a crazy woman like, 'Must get these bottles,' then just went back to sleep," she said.

Kalisiak has since recovered but she is still fighting through the aftereffects of the illness. One of the main issues is brain fog, which has her working at a much slower pace than usual.

"I'll be mixing a batch and then go, 'What did I just put in that bucket?' " she said.

Husband Chris has recovered and is back to work. Talia is still hospitalized, but she's improving and was taken off the ventilator last week.

Sales are down at Martinsville Soapworks, but that is the least of Kalisiak's concerns.

"I just want my kid back. I would give it all up if we didn't have to go through this," she said.

"I would give my business up in a heartbeat for my kid or for someone else's kid," she said. "You can always rebuild a business. You can't get back a life."

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