When people talk about Jimmy Lew, one of the original owners of Lew\u2019s Market in Logan Heights, one thing keeps coming up.<\/p>\n
\u201c(He was) very kind and very giving,\u201d said Ren\u00e9 Bejarno, one of his former neighbors.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just a real kind person,\u201d said Delia Bejrano, Ren\u00e9\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood, kind-hearted people,\u201d Jos\u00e9 Brice\u00f1o said.<\/p>\n
Lew died on Aug. 15, but residents still fondly remember his generosity and what he did for many families who lived in the working-class neighborhood.<\/p>\n
In a neighborhood where there\u2019s a lack of big grocery stores, residents depended on that small market for everyday goods.<\/p>\n
His son, James Lew Jr., described his dad as a well-intentioned people-pleaser who often extended credit.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople saw it as like a community bank, they called it,\u201d James said. \u201cI recall having mental flashes of his little notebooks where he would have running tabs with people, the annotations, what was paid off, what was written off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c(He) gave us whatever we needed. Put it on the book,\u201d Brice\u00f1o said. \u201cMy parents came in later and pay them off.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Lew\u2019s grandparents opened Lew\u2019s Market in the 1970s at the corner of 33rd Street and Imperial Avenue. At the time, they were the only Chinese family in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was mostly Mexican and a Black neighborhood,\u201d Ren\u00e9 Bejarano said. He and his wife used to live behind the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe moved there in like 1974,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bejarano remembers the family keeping to themselves. They lived upstairs in the apartment above the market.<\/p>\n
The news of Jimmy\u2019s death came as a shock to the Bejaranos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it. I couldn\u2019t believe that he passed away because I had heard about Philip,\u201d Delia Bejarano said. \u201cBut Jimmy \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Phillip was Jimmy\u2019s brother. The two ran the store together. Phillip died before Jimmy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to see (Jimmy) every day and it just seemed like he would live a long, long time,\u201d Ren\u00e9 Bejarano said. \u201cI just don\u2019t think, you know, I think he was probably 76, 77. He just looked a lot healthier.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the one thing Ren\u00e9 remembers most about Jimmy was that his generosity extended to animals too.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would get a big bone with some meat on it and give it to my dog,\u201d Bejarano said. \u201cAnd my dog would go down the \u2014 because we lived right behind Lew\u2019s market in the alley, and he would just go down the alley with his big bone in his mouth, walking slowly and all the dogs that go crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Lew says his father was generous, almost to a fault.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy own cousins tell me about kind of like the private embarrassment that they would have when my aunts would send them to the store with a handwritten note asking for assistance and the things that they need,\u201d James said. \u201cAnd to him it was no, no big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of those cousins is Jos\u00e9 Brice\u00f1o. He still lives in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cHim and Philipe, they both had a little book in their little pocket,\u201d Brice\u00f1o said. \u201cYou know, we\u2019ll walk in there and be like, \u2018Oh, we need this, we need that.\u2019 And he\u2019d be like, \u2018OK, you got money?\u2019 \u2018No, we don\u2019t.\u2019 \u2018Well, I\u2019m gonna put it on your dad\u2019s credit; what\u2019s the last name.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Brice\u00f1o said that generosity helped a lot of families in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did help us out sometimes,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe we didn\u2019t have it at the time, I don\u2019t know, I was too young to even know what I mean. What was money like that? But I just know that (if) we walked in there, they\u2019d help us out. They gave us whatever we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lews sold the market in 2017. But it still bears their name. And the younger generation of the family still lives in the apartment upstairs.<\/p>\n
James says the outpouring of support reminds him how much he needs to live up to his father\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a certain existential pressure that comes with that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then also, you know, having been given his name, being born a junior. So it was very much this expectation that, \u2018Oh, one day you were going to be exactly where your father is at.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The market still stands.<\/p>\n
While Jimmy Lew is gone, the memories live on through the people in the neighborhood who will never forget his charitable heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When people talk about Jimmy Lew, one of the original owners of Lew\u2019s Market in Logan Heights, one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-464677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}