VERO BEACH - Rain and wind were whipping across Indian River County. Power was out in most areas. Tree limbs were down. Stores were closed.
Well, most stores.
Violet Colley and her family kept their neighborhood market open in the Gifford community. Even in the dark. Even in the wind.
And their neighbors in the poor area 5 miles south of the manicured neighborhoods of Vero Beach came in droves to buy last-minute supplies: vienna sausages, pork and beans, beer. Anything to help them pass the hours ahead.
Colley's daughter, Marilyn McDonald, helped shoppers find their way around the tiny store in the dark. She held a flashlight, peeked into darkened shelves, searched the coolers.
"We're out of bread. We've been out all day," she told one shopper. "No more vienna sausages."
Colley, in charge of the family market named Guy Colley's, for her husband, said she wasn't going to open Saturday but customers were depending on her.
"They called me up at home," she said. "I live just over there, and they called me and said they needed me. So I opened."
While Colley manned the cash drawer by hand, her other daughter, Patricia, tallied up sales on a battery-powered calculator.
"I just found out they were open. It's the only store open anywhere," shopper Jacob Pryor said. "I'm going to my parents' house to see what they need, and I'm coming back."
Pryor left with beans and snack cakes. Behind him, people lined up at the tiny window that served as a checkout, holding all manner of canned goods, and the occasional six-pack of beer.
The prices were the same as everyday. No storm surcharge, Colley said, just neighbors helping neighbors. She said she would stay open as long as people needed her, as long as she could.
Down the street, Ricky Johnson said he knew he could depend on Colley to open.
His directions, in a neighborhood of simple concrete-block homes with a few paved roads, were specific.
"Go down here, past the stop sign, then, the first road on your right," he said.
Then he corrected himself: "The first hard road."
Most in the neighborhood were riding out the storm in their houses, but some were holed up in a Red Cross shelter at Gifford Middle School.
Leonard Bassi, 78, of Sebastian, spent Friday night in the shelter.
"I slept on the floor," he said. "I told them this morning I had to go back home and get my mattress. I told them I'd come right back."
Sure enough, about 11:30 a.m., he pulled up with his air mattress, and one other thing: his collection of antique light bulbs.
Pinellas 
