by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Hanna Lee

Age: 32

Occupation: Dépanneur clerk

Bio: This effervescent, beautiful downtown flower first arrived in Canada as a sweet young thing of 20. A social science student in her native Korea, when her parents became ill young Hanna abandoned her studies to take over stewardship of Super Dépanneur, the most super duper of all super dépanneurs located on the northwest corner of Prince Arthur and Parc Avenue. “I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and it’s true, some days I just sigh and go, ‘I want to change my life.’ But I like the store, I like the people, I like my customers. I work very hard but I don’t really have any complaints—other than being here from eight in the morning until 11 at night, almost every night of the year.”

Has Super Dépanneur ever been held up? “Well, yes, of course.”

Is shoplifting a big problem for her? No more than at any store. “A lot of people who steal here do it for fun, not because they don’t have money. You catch them and they say, ‘Oh, no problem, I’ll just pay you now.’ They don’t even say sorry, it’s like some kind of fun game for them. It costs $1,000 a month for an apartment upstairs [in LaCité] but I’ve caught people living there coming down to steal newspapers from me, regular customers who I know. And when I catch them, they just laugh and go, ‘Oh, you caught me,’ like it’s not anything. Some people, when you catch them they make big trouble. Some people they just run away. At least when they run away they never come back.”

One downside to busting well-off regular customers who also like to steal from you: They stop shopping at your store.

Does she have any alternate career plans? “Sometimes I think it would be nice to go back to school to learn dressmaking or cooking or home decoration, but then I think I’m crazy, it’s too late for me. But I’d like to learn something just for myself. Maybe next January if I have more time I will go to school—except most of these courses are at night, and I work all night. And most of my family who work with me, they have children, so they need to be home at nights, they can’t cover for me.”

The number one beer among Parc Avenue alcoholics: Colt 45.

Given her undeniably warm disposition, do a lot of lonely people like to loiter around her store and yak at her all day? “Yes, but that’s okay, I like to speak with them too.”

Childhood ambition: To become a dressmaker. “That’s what my

parents did back in Korea.”

Current ambition: To become a world-famous dressmaker “and go to parties in New York and things like that.” Or “to find a nice man to settle down and have children with.”

Last book read: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

Musical preferences: Paul Simon, Abba.

Words of wisdom: “Live for the moment.”

Comments? dimwit@hdot.net