A Chappaqua business owner who lost both parents to COVID-19 and had to shut down her business for months due to the pandemic, says she is now back on her feet and is bringing a new life into the world.
Sarah David owns the House of 29 in Chappaqua, a posh boutique along South Greeley Avenue that sells curated jewelry, clothing and accessories.
David is eight months pregnant now, and says she's coming back from the pandemic with a new outlook.
"I don't forget what happened, it's made me stronger in certain ways," she says.
Sarah had to watch both her parents battle cancer last year. In January 2020, her mom Arlene had a massive stroke, and while both her parents were in rehab, they came down with COVID-19 in April 2020. Her father died a month later.
"We knew he was dying, so I literally had the two of them on FaceTime saying goodbye to each other, my parents would have celebrated 50 years of marriage last October. That was the most difficult thing to try and manage," she says.
David also got COVID-19 shortly after as the pandemic forced her to shut her doors.
David says her mom was the one giving her the strength to keep going.
She says she never complained a day, all she wanted was to come back to the store.
Her mother passed away in December 2020.
Despite her devastating loss, David said she had to move forward. She says she looked around and realized her parents were such a huge part of the very fabric of her store.
"I keep in the back of my head the store so important to both of them that they would want to keep everything going," she says.
She says the memories of her parents will always be with her in the store, even now as she prepares herself for a new addition in her life.