Christians
In Business: From booking criminals
to a
ministry of books
In
1977, if Officer of the Peace Dannie McDaniel stopped someone, it may have been
to take them to jail. Today, Mrs. Dannie Haemig works for the Prince of Peace
and is more interested in setting people free.
This
month, Dannie celebrates 23 years of service to North County residents as the
owner of Loaves and Fishes Christian Bookstore in Vista. On this anniversary, former
policewoman Dannie and her husband Steve voice appreciation for convictions of
a different sort.
“Our
desire is to serve and glorify God by the material and products we
carry,” beams Dannie. “Helping people find the right Bible and
seeing a life changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ is rewarding beyond
imagination.”
But
Dannie wasn’t always so interested in the welfare of others. Dannie was a
middle child with a hard drinking Marine Gunnery Sergeant dad. She shared her
father’s mettle. “From an early age, I was determined to better
myself.” A graduate of MiraCosta College, she favored accounting and
computers, which landed her a job for a local computer company. She also landed
in an abusive marriage with an alcoholic first husband in her early twenties.
After about five years, the marriage was over.
Negative
circumstances didn’t dampen Dannie’s spirit. In fact, they
motivated her forward. The disciplines of military life were
not far removed from the disciplines of law enforcement, to which Dannie found
herself drawn. She used her job at the Military Exchange to pay bills while she
volunteered at the local police department.
In
1977, Dannie was accepted for full-time police work. After the police academy,
she went to work the same year as one of the early female patrol officers in
the Oceanside Police Department. “It was what I’d dreamed of for a
long time,” she says. Over the next year or so she represented her
department and her gender well. “I had everything that I had hoped and
prepared for.” While on patrol one pre-dawn winter morning, she realized
how empty her dream world really was. “If I have all this, why am I still
not happy?” she wondered. The answer came from a fellow officer. It was
standard procedure “to meet with fellow officers in adjacent patrol areas
and exchange information about what was happening on the street.”
Dannie
noticed something different about her fellow officer. “It’s the
Lord in my life,” the other patrolman proclaimed. Then, tucked somewhere
between his holster, nightstick and handcuffs he produced a Gospel tract.
“After reading it, I determined that God was who I was missing,”
she remembers. “The next time we met, he brought me a New Testament.
Later he asked if I had any questions. I said yes. How do I accept the Lord?”
That was when Dannie’s future forever changed.
A
voracious reader, Dannie never tired of finding out about her new life in
Christ. Whenever she was off duty, she always ended up in Christian bookstores.
“I guess I liked them so much that I bought one.” In 1981 she left
the security and prestige of being a female police officer, trading it for a
tiny 385 square foot bookstore on South Santa Fe Avenue in Vista. She had
enough money to buy it from a pastor and his wife. “I’ve been living
by faith ever since.”
Scripture tells us not to despise small beginnings. Dannie
can attest to the value of that verse. Within six months, she remodeled and
expanded her facility to 960 square feet. Six years later one of her church
elders who was a dentist offered her space next to his Escondido Avenue dental
offices, co-owned by one of the partners.
Today,
Dannie and Steve, who has assumed the operations and buying role for the
business, celebrate their bookstore’s 23rd anniversary. They employ up to
a dozen people within an impressive 4,761-square-foot building at 510 Hacienda
Drive, just south of Hwy. 78 at Melrose Drive in Vista.
Where
once Dannie Haemig’s main interest was self-improvement, now her emphasis
has changed, using the books she sells to help others reach their highest
potential in God. “We want to provide a service to our community and the
Church by offering the tools to help people grow in the knowledge and character
of Jesus Christ.”
“Providing
a source for God’s Word to the community is a responsibility and
privilege we don’t take lightly. If all the pastors and churches would
recommend use the Christian stores in their area for resources to reach and
teach, only God would know the
limits to the impact on the world,” she said.
Caz Taylor works in advertising and is a Christian author and Bible teacher. He welcomes suggestions for this monthly feature and can be contacted at cazndaf@dellepro.com.