By Marie and Rusty Goe
When Maya joined us three years ago, she was a young girl who worked hard to learn the basics. I noticed at the end of her shift that she was never a clock-watcher. If she had something to finish she didn’t consider the shift over until she had completed the job, and she holds that trait to this day.
Maya blossomed when she became the lead girl in the second half of 2008. She had absorbed our principles and culture and had begun to transfer them to all her trainees. New employees also had a role model to emulate. We have a great crew of girls now (in 2010), and in no small part, we give credit to Maya for helping us develop and bring out the best in each employee.
Maya planned on taking the spring semester off from school in 2009 and working full-time. Pregnancy—a surprise to her and all of us—did not figure in to her plans. Life is full of surprises.
With Maya here full-time at the start of her third year with us, we were all looking forward to tackling some of the bigger projects on our list. These included launching the C4OA club Web site that Rusty had designed, and upgrading our Southgate Coins Web site.
Furthermore, we faced the busy spring and summer schedule, which included a company golf tournament and two major club meetings—one of which included travel to Los Angeles, with PowerPoint lectures. Maya did well assisting Rusty at the L.A. show and annual C4OA club meeting. Even Maya’s pregnancy did not hamper her (just her sore feet from walking all over the convention area).
At Southgate Coins, we define an assistant by using as an example the character “Radar,” the colonel’s right-hand man in the movie and TV series Mash. As the colonel would give instructions and issue orders, Radar would try to predict what order the colonel would give. Like clockwork, Radar carried out the order before the colonel issued it. Our employees—the ones who are involved and committed—strive to work under this credo, which gives the title, assistant, real value and meaning.
This is the role—assistant to both Rusty and me—Maya strives to play. She has learned to rely heavily on lists to help her remember to do all her tasks. These duties are essential in helping us to run our company. They include managing a busy retail store with six employees, managing a Web site, and overseeing the constant C4OA club work.
Motherhood has presented new challenges for Maya and her mate Matt, but they are both committed and responsible people. They share baby-care duties, so they both can work and still get enough rest to perform well on their jobs. We are very proud to have baby Embry as Southgate Coins’s mascot, and are very glad to once again have Maya back to work (part-time, for now).
Maya has become a dear friend in the time she has worked at Southgate Coins, someone I both trust and enjoy to have near me. I have watched her grow from young girlhood into a lovely young woman. She has a calm temperament, which helps her keep her head under stress, as there is always much action with which to deal at the store.
As Maya starts her fourth year with us, we look forward to many future happy adventures with her.
Congratulations Maya, we’re glad you call Southgate Coins your home away from home.
Now here’s Rusty to add some closing comments.
Thanks Marie.
So much is crammed into a year in the life of a girl in her early twenties. What Maya Roberts experienced between the times we celebrated her second anniversary at Southgate Coins in March 2009 and her third in 2010 is astonishing. Her maturity and consciousness have magnified, and because she flung herself into activities with enthusiasm, she has strengthened the solid foundation on which her life already is grounded.
Maya added many words and phrases to her vocabulary this past year. Apart from the new numismatic terms she learned, I’m sure that Web development, search engine friendly URLs, MSO formatting conflicts, and SEO will stick in her mind. Maya learned these terms—part of a lexicon for Web sites—while helping our company search for a new webmaster. She sat in on many interviews I had with Web site developers and took meticulous notes. She also served as a liaison between Southgate Coins and the company that supposedly managed our Web site (at least that’s what we paid it to do).
As the head of human resources at Southgate Coins, Maya interviewed hundreds of job applicants. This work paid off, as we hired two new girls—Dixie and Shayna. Maya then trained them in strategies she learned over three years with us, to get them off to a good start—Maya knows well what it takes to be a successful Southgate girl. She serves as a great role model to not just the new girls, but also to all our employees. Although Maya is in the same age group as the other girls here—she’s not even the oldest—they all look up to her and know she’s in charge.
Maya’s third year at Southgate began with a thrill in spring 2009 when she watched with a gallery of spectators, Cara, another Southgate girl, win our firm’s first invitational golf tournament.
The momentum never subsided as the year progressed, and by August 2009, Maya’s connection to the Carson City Coin Collectors of America had taken her on some memorable journeys. She attended her first World’s Fair of Money convention hosted by the American Numismatic Association in Los Angeles. This event coincided with the Carson City Coin Collectors of America’s annual meeting, at which Maya’s service proved meritorious.
From Los Angeles, Maya’s next big events were the coin show and the CCCCOA regional meeting, held in conjunction at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City in August. At both of them, she received many accolades from other club members. Not only did they praise Maya for her club support, they also recognized her accomplishments as a contributing article writer for the club’s journal, Curry’s Chronicle. Her club participation—that is strictly voluntary other than her work in it linked to her paid duties as a Southgate employee—distinguishes her role in our company and in the field of numismatics.
Seven weeks before we celebrated Maya’s third anniversary at Southgate Coins with a yummy bundt cake, a card, and an award presentation, she experienced one of the most cherished moments of her young life. On Monday, January 18, 2010, Maya gave birth to her first child, a beautiful little daughter named Embry. Now, not only does Maya have a career to manage and a position in the CCCCOA in which to engage, she adds motherhood to her list of priorities (obviously, motherhood is the No. 1). If she raises Embry according to the same principles of humility and accountability by which Maya lives, Embry will become a valuable member of society, as her mother is. If Marie and I still are in business when Embry reaches working age, we gladly will hire her if she’s anything like her mom.
Congratulations to you, Maya, and thank you for three loyal years of valuable service to Southgate Coins.
With love,
Rusty and Marie