In the middle of Santaquin’s quiet Main Street, just west of Center Street, sits White Feather Rocks, a one-stop-shop emporium for all your rock needs. The shop has everything from jewelry to collectibles, and even crystals that the owners lovingly place in what they refer to as their “woo-woo corner.” If your needs are stone-based, owners Jim and Loretta Moshier are here to help.
The Moshier’s story began in California, with Jim Moshier, who is a native of Michigan, fresh out of the Marine Corps. Jim’s parents had recently relocated to California, so he moved there along with them. As luck or fate would have it, he met Loretta, a fourth-generation Californian herself, in the Modesto area, while Jim was attending the Merced Junior College.
Their early life together was busy with each of them finding success in their respective career paths. Loretta went from doing ATM repairs for Brink’s, a cash handling company, before joining up with Federal Security guarding Social Security offices and IRS buildings in the wake of 9/11. Jim was an insurance agent by day and also owned and operated a vending machine company in the Bay area. Busy as they were, Jim and Loretta also worked together doing process serving, which meant Jim would swing by a lawyer’s office on his way home to get the papers, and in the evening they’d go out and serve them together.
”We have always just followed wherever things were meant to go,” Loretta said. ”We’ve made and lost our fortune several times. We’ve just always thought ‘if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.’”
In the early 2000s, Jim and Loretta sent their daughter to Utah to attend BYU, and shortly after, they traveled to Utah to visit. On the plane ride home to California, however, both recalled feeling like they were leaving home rather than going back to it.
“It was like this is where we needed to be,” Loretta says. “That was in May, and by August, we had put our house on the market, sold our businesses, and turned around and found a place here and moved out.”
The Moshiers relocated in 2005 and put themselves to work as they had always done together. About a decade later, however, Loretta was in an auto accident. She had been working as a bus aid for disabled children, but after the incident, she was no longer able to manage the physical demands of her job. This left Loretta wondering what she should do with all her time while she recovered.
Fortunately for Loretta, she had recently found a box of Mexican fire opal, which are yellow, orange, or red gems, at a yard sale. Not sure what she had just purchased, Loretta brought it to some friends who owned a rock shop and asked their advice.
“I wondered what to do with these rocks,” Loretta recalled. “Do I tumble them or what do I do?”
Her friends told her that if she started polishing them and making jewelry, that she “had a lot of money in that box.”
While recovering from her accident, Loretta put herself to work polishing rocks. At the time, she considered it a hobby, but the venture quickly grew. Jim and Loretta began buying machines and started making jewelry out of their garage.
Oddly enough, Jim had actually taken lapidary courses in college, studying the cutting, engraving, and polishing of stones. At the time, he loved it but didn’t think it was anything he could ever make a living at. This new opportunity, however, gave him a reason to pick it back up.
Soon, their little jewelry hobby grew into a business and they began looking for a storefront. When looking for a place, they knew it “had to be on Main Street,” and they had to find “just the right name.”
“One day, Jim was working in the backyard and I was upstairs, and I looked out the window and …. this white feather just started floating down out of nowhere,” Lorretta recalled. “I ran down and told Jim, ‘I’ve got it!’”
Armed with the name White Feather, and with rocks ready to sell, they found a storefront on Main Street, just like they had been looking for. The store opened officially in 2015. And while they have since moved to another location on Main, they have stayed true to their goal of bringing beautiful rock jewelry and novelty needs to the heart of Santaquin.
Now, at 78 years old, Jim has retired three times, but it has never stuck. Today, he’s often busy making custom jewelry for special orders while the shop is stocked with wholesale rocks.
“I can honestly say it’s not a job; it’s our hobby,” Loretta said. ”Neither one of us dread going in in the morning. If anything, we get here early because we look forward to coming. We love the small town. We love knowing people. It keeps us alive.”
