Coming soon to the First Street Community Center in Mount Vernon, ” is Foraged and Found, a vintage second-hand shop owned by Mount Vernon resident Tina Conroy.

Conroy, a wife and mother of five children, has spent years thrifting vintage and antique items.

“I’ve always been a thrifter, and, you know, ultimately, I like the idea of keeping items out of the landfill: reusing, repurposing. Having five kids, I was always trying to save money, so my kids never had new clothes—or very rarely did—we always thrifted everything,” Conroy explained.

However, when her home became too full for all of the thrifted items that she had been collecting over the years, Conroy decided that to continue her thrifting, she had to start selling some things.

In both Mount Vernon and Cedar Rapids, she opened up a booth at vintage and antique markets to begin clearing out her home of the extra items. However, after a while, the booths became too much of a hassle.

“It got to the point where I was doing markets—just a handful of markets—and they were so much work; just prepping for the one-to-two-day thing, getting everything there, setting up, tearing down,” Conroy said. “It ended up not being just work for me, but tons of work for my husband as well.”

In August 2025, Conroy began reaching out to venues, starting her search by contacting Trude Elliott, an owner of the First Street Community Center in Mount Vernon. Conroy received communication from Elliott to wait a month, as things would be changing within the First Street Community Center, and in September, Conroy received news from Elliott.

What had previously been The Green Door was clearing out their space, and if Conroy wanted it, she could have it. Together, they worked out a compromise in which Conroy could move in within a few months and begin setting the place up as her own.

“I never ended up calling anybody else for information. This just seemed like the perfect place to go,” Conroy said.

Since then, Conroy and her family, especially her husband, have had to put in work to make her dream come to life. Such work has included painting the walls to brighten up the space, uncovering the windows, building wardrobe units and the front desk, and loading and moving heavy pieces of furniture that Conroy has found on Facebook Marketplace.

Conroy shared that her husband has helped her throughout the entire process. From encouraging her to start her own business to building pieces of furniture for the shop, “he has been the biggest support,” Conroy said.

Financially, however, things have been a bit of a burden. Currently, since she is not working outside of the shop, Conroy isn’t bringing in any income, which makes it difficult to find affordable ways to put her shop together.

However, Conroy found a loophole: Facebook Marketplace users are often giving items away for free.

“I’ve tried to do everything as cheaply as I could. […] I just search ‘free’ on [Facebook] Marketplace and see what I can find, and I have gotten a lot of really nice things that people just want to get rid of, or that they just want out of their way,” Conroy explained, “and the things that I haven’t gotten free, I haven’t spent a lot of money on, so I’m kind of amazed at how little I’ve had to spend to do it.”

Conroy has hopes that once her shop is complete, customers will see it as a destination among the local antique shops, including the two that are located on the same level of the First Street Community Center as Conroy’s Foraged and Found, as well as Polly Ann’s Vintage Market across the street.

In contrast to the antique shops, however, Conroy will be selling more vintage items than antique ones.

“I would say [the antique shops] are maybe more… antique-y. So, you know, older-type stuff than mine; mine’s more vintage than antique. […] It tends to be more home decor stuff, but there’s no specific way to describe it,” Conroy said. “Mostly, it’s stuff that I like, and I just hope that other people will like it too. It can be very eclectic, and a mishmash of stuff.”

As she has been putting her store together for next to no cost, Conroy has found it rewarding to see her vision coming to life. Additionally, she enjoys seeing people peek into the door, curious about what will take the place of The Green Door.

“People who knew there was a shop here before are intrigued by what’s going in here. They’re excited that something’s taking the place of the shop that was here before. And it’s been rewarding to see their excitement with it too, so that’s been fun. I’m really excited to just get it open and let them come in and see what it is,” Conroy said.

Conroy officially opened Foraged and Found Saturday, June 6.