THE BUSINESS OF CHILDCARE
Lacey's Good Times Child Care Center co-owners, Ashlynn Walker, left, and her mother, Crystal Johnson, right.
Two Years of Daily Struggle Mother and Daughter Business Owners Share Why It's Worth It by Jerica Pender Photography by Heather Harris, Elements Photography
Childcare. Perhaps the single most important cog in the wheel that makes our world turn. Without it, parents become unmoored, unable to perform their duties in meaningful ways, and sometimes even at all. In a community, childcare providers are the lifeblood—and without their tender loving care of the youngest youth, a community becomes drained of possibility, a mere shell of what it could be. thurstonchamber.com
“COVID has intensified everything that we do,” says Crystal Johnson, co-owner of Good Times Childcare in Lacey, a childcare center that she owns and operates with her daughter, Ashlynn Walker. “We live in fear that somebody is going to come in here with COVID and not realize it because they are asymptomatic. We live with the fear of being closed down and parents leaving and pulling children. We are greatly affected.” Johnson and Walker opened Good Times Childcare in January of 2020. Like most of the world at that time, Johnson said they were oblivious to what was going on, and never could have imagined that just two short months later, she’d be shuttering her doors for the next five. “We almost lost everything we had put into this,” she says, “I was—and still am—impacted mentally. We invested everything we had to get the business started and off the ground. We didn’t use grants, or loans, or anything. We did it ourselves.” Thurston County Chamber VOICE
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