Man's furniture venture in Lacey marks long road back

After ending a $400 a day OxyContin habit, 24-year-old ready for work

By Rolf Boone | The Olympian • Published August 21, 2008

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LACEY – Jeff Olson and his girlfriend, Stevie Rotella, are working 14-hour days to continue an Olson family tradition of working in the furniture business.

All that work is expected to pay off Sept. 2, when the couple will open Hawks Prairie Home Furnishings Outlet, a furniture retailer at 8221 Martin Way E., next to Grocery Outlet.

Olson, 24, is the third generation of his family to enter the furniture business. His father, Marty, 50, owns a furniture manufacturer in Wilsonville, Ore., and his grandfather, Warren, 87, spent his entire career running a furniture business or selling furniture.

"I'm not going to have a day off for the first year," Jeff Olson said Wednesday as he contemplated the work ahead.

He knows he has a long way to go, but he also knows how far he has come. Three years ago, while a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Olson developed an addiction to the prescription painkiller OxyContin after taking it as a replacement for Percocet to deal with ankle pain caused by a torn tendon.

For six months he took the drug sporadically, he said, but couldn't stop because of withdrawal symptoms that included nausea and anxiety. Before long he had a $400-a-day habit, he said.

At rock bottom, Olson had emptied his savings account, maxed out his credit cards and sold his car to feed his habit. He also found himself isolated from friends and family, separated from his girlfriend and stopped going to school.

Marty Olson said Wednesday he was furious when he learned his son had a drug problem, adding he didn't want to believe it.

"I think we ignored a lot of signs," he said.

With help from his sister, Julie, Jeff was reunited with his family and sent to a drug-rehabilitation clinic in Phoenix for 30 days. He relapsed once, but that experience, which resulted in terrible migraine headaches, finally forced him to remain clean, he said.

"I don't want to go down that road again," he said Wednesday.

Since, Olson has gradually returned to the business world. He started by selling returned, repossessed and overstocked furniture online, then saved enough money to open his own store, signing a four-year lease for the 12,400-square-foot storefront in Lacey.

"First of all, I'm really proud of him," Marty Olson said about his son's venture. "He got into trouble, but he's worked really hard to get himself clean."

Rolf Boone covers business for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5403 or rboone@theolympian.com.