Phillip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer, Helen Heintz found herself Wednesday morning making small talk with a customer at the used bookstore she manages in the Princeton Public Library., She’s gotten to know more than a few people in the past four plus years that she’s had the volunteer job, one she is stepping away from next month. It was, at times, a labor of love that Heintz is giving up as she becomes an empty-nester at 55 and looks to find the next thing to occupy her time and attention., “Welcome to my lair,” Heintz said greeting a visitor as she sets out to explain how a former Bell Labs engineer, originally from Southern California, came to schlep books and deal with all the attendant dust that is a form of occupational hazard., In an interview, she stood inside a large, white storage room on the fourth-floor of the library, a floor that most people wouldn’t even know existed looking from the outside of the building given its configuration. She is alone, except for the book-lined shelves and the boxes of books all around her., Each day, hundreds of books are donated, a never-ending flow of material akin to mail at the Post Office. Donations come from within and outside the community, like from a family giving away a deceased loved one’s book collection., “Everybody loves this library,” she said in explaining what motivates their altruism., Located on the first floor, the store is run by the Friends of the Princeton Public Library, a nonprofit that supports the library financially. Sales of books monthly average $9,000 to $10,000, money that the Friends keep and then, minus its expenses, turn over to the library. The book store is just one of the ways the organization carries out its mission, including its annual book sale and gala, through the year., Heintz got involved with the Friends, initially interviewing to become its assistant treasurer, and found herself in charge of operating the bookstore – something that had fulfilled a long-held ambition., “I’ve always wanted to run a bookstore,” she said of an opportunity that comes “without the financial entanglements” of having to pay for staff and rent., “If you go to any excellent university town, you’ll see these,” she said of the store. “It’s a reading town.”, In terms of her inventory, science, math and philosophy books sell fast, while art, history and children’s books sell the most., Heintz’s path to Princeton and the library started on the other side of the country., She grew up the youngest of five children of a father who was a psychology professor at California State University-Long Beach. The family was “poor,” in her words. As a girl, she was allowed to buy 99-cent-Signet Classics, in what might have sparked an interest in one day managing a book store., The Heintz family was more liberal Berkeley, California than it was conservative Orange County, where Heintz grew up. For college, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, the self-described nerdy engineering student who graduated in 1985 and came to the East Coast the same year for graduate school at Columbia University., Life after college included career stops on Wall Street and at Bell Labs, saw her marry, start a family and move from Monmouth County to Princeton seven years ago. She is active in local Democratic politics, including working on the re-election campaign last year of Mayor Liz Lempert, among her other interests., While being in charge of the bookstore, she has gotten to know lots of people, many of them regulars, including several “characters,” in her words. A staff of some 35 volunteers including herself keep the store running every day the library is open, now with a paid part-time store manager due to replace Heintz., She won’t be the same five-day, 20-hours-a-week fixture at the library she has been in recent years. She is not sure what’s next for her, but jokes that the publicity about her leaving likely will open up a new opportunity., , , , ,
