Rocks and more — lots more

And it doesn't.

"When I started this place, my mother told me I had rocks in my head," said Eulaine Turner, 70, who owns and lives at her mineral/jewelry/novelty/knickknack store at 6275 N. Sandario Road in Picture Rocks.

Jed's is kept alive by its three owners' Social Security and retirement money. Two or three people a day trickle into the store, sometimes nobody. There are weeks when Jed's won't pull in $100, Eulaine said.

Maybe that's because you've got to go looking for it. Some visitors are out-of-town rockhounds. Others just get lost and find themselves at Jed's.

To get there from the Northwest Side — say, West Ina Road — takes a sightseeing tour, a twisting drive through Saguaro National Park West. Drive past a few thousand cacti and eventually you wind up in Eulaine's front yard, full of petrified stumps, multicolored boulders and rusty mining carts.

Eulaine calls the front yard her "rock garden."

No one's around. A couple hawks circle overheard. There's a warm breeze. Silence. A little black dog trots up. It wags its frayed little tail.

"I don't know what breed she is, but I know she's a good hunter," somebody says.

Not just a rock store

Out of nowhere, there's a real person. It's Don Kern, 76, who lives with Eulaine and her husband.

"The dog's name is Nophera. You must be here to see Eulaine," he says. "Let's find her."

She's inside the store, but you can't tell that right away. The place is piled high with stuff — to say it's a rock store doesn't cover it. Copper kitten statuettes are jammed in next to calcite specimens.

Past shelves of ironwood buffaloes and hidden behind the necklace racks, Eulaine is with a customer.

"What a mess. I tell people it's a scavenger hunt," she later says of the jumble.

She's actually busy. Her husband, Jerry Turner, 67, leaning next to a case full of clocks, takes over the tour.

"I'm the 'J' in Jed," he says.

Jed's not short for Jerry. It's an acronym. Twenty-one years ago, Jerry, Eulaine and Don founded the store in Northwest Tucson as J.E.D.'s Rock Treasures and More.

"It's always been Jed's, but it used to have dots. Somewhere along the line those dots got lost," Turner said.

He walks down the aisles of the store, picking rocks out of cardboard boxes and plastic tubs. They've thrown together quite a collection, buying other rock stores, getting donations from amateur geologists.

"Quartzes, wulfenite, galena, pyrite and … some of this stuff I don't know rightly what they are," he says. "This one's orange calcite."

In the backyard they polish rocks in 100-pound tumblers and cut them into different shapes for necklaces and rings in their makeshift workshop.

Keeping the dream alive

It's just Jerry and Don — both retired from the Air Force — and Eulaine, who looks like she could be anybody's grandma. She's short, with curly hair and spectacles.

Eulaine is finishing up with her customer, Ehren Bowman, who's in the first grade.

She's with her dad, Travis, who is "kind of a rock hound." He says she can pick out anything she wants. She and Eulaine are making a pair of earrings out of a few stones Ehren chose.

The little girl also has a piece of mahogany obsidian, cut into a heart, that Eulaine says she can make into a necklace later if she wants.

"It took a long time to figure out what I wanted," Ehren tells Eulaine. "There's a lot of pretty stuff here."

Eulaine fumbles with some clamps as she puts the earrings together for Ehren.

Chemotherapy has dulled the feeling in her hands. Eulaine was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, and she's still being treated for it. While she was sick the men kept the store going anyway, for her.

Eulaine sticks the only $20 they might make from sales all week into the cash register. She doesn't close it because it's broken. If she shuts the register door it won't open again.

"Everything's going to pot around here," she says and laughs.

But Jed's hasn't fallen apart yet — it's still there because somebody wants it to be.

How to get there

From I-10 westbound, take Exit 248 to West Ina Road. Travel west on Ina three miles and turn left on North Wade Road. From there, take West Picture Rocks Road about seven miles west to North Sandario Road. Turn left at Sandario Road and drive half a mile to 6275 N. Sandario Road.

For more information call 882-6044.

Jed's Rock Treasures and More is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-4 p.m. Sunday.