Dairy Queen has been the center of Summer Huntington's life.
"I was raised in the back of the store. I remember growing up here," she says of the DQ at 1025 E. Irvington Road that her mother, Jennifer Gin, has owned for 32 years - since the year before Huntington, 31, was born.
Summer and her brother had folding beds in the back for naps, and "all the employees were like our baby sitters," she recalls.
It was perfect training for her adult life: Huntington now runs the East Irvington store - as well as her family's new Dairy Queen, which just opened at 1760 W. Speedway.
"I'm taking over the business and I wanted to expand," she explains of the new Speedway and Silverbell store, which is the only DQ west of Interstate 10 in Tucson.
On Tuesday, Huntington was also busy helping a separate DQ franchise prepare to open here, by teaching its employees how to make ice cream cakes. That Dairy Queen, owned by Carole Shrewsbury, will open today at 2170 W. River Road, at La Cholla Boulevard, said its manager, Cricket Lewis.
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There's only one downside to so much Dairy Queen in Huntington's world. Neither she nor her brother crave its ice cream, she says. "We've had it our whole lives."