Grandmother Karen Bailey owns and operates her own small business, servicing 11 Great Falls Naturals 2 Go vending machines in nine locations.

Bailey, 73, buys healthy snacks such as beef jerky, pistachios and granola bars in bulk at Sam’s Club and drinks such as V8 energy drinks and iced tea at Wal-Mart and packs them into small paper bags inside a large black suitcase divided into compartments.

She has divided her business into routes and usually refills two or three vending machines each day. She’s gotten to know when to fill each machine and what customers like.

“I enjoy covering the different routes and talking to folks I encounter,” Bailey said. “It’s not that prosperous yet, but it supplements my very fixed income, survivor benefits from my late husband’s Social Security.”

Bailey was born in Dillon and spent many years living near Lolo, raising a family with her husband, a drywall contractor who died in 1999. She moved to Great Falls in 2003 to be closer to a son and his family.

The son and his wife invested in the vending machine four years ago, buying a dozen machines from a Utah company, but decided about a year ago to get out of running it because they were too busy with their regular jobs.

Bailey’s son told her he was thinking of donating the vending machines to a charity to run as a fundraising activity

“I told him I’d been looking for some way to supplement my income, so ‘Why not make your mother your favorite charity?’” she recalled.

“He wasn’t sure I was physically up to the work, but agreed to let me try it. My grandson took me around to the vending machine sites and trained me.”

Bailey officially took control of the business in September.

Her grandson had loaded the replacement snacks into a couple of large laundry bins and toted them, a method Baily considered too heavy and awkward for her.

So she came up with the idea of using the suitcase that’s so large that airlines no longer permit them on flights, but is conveniently divided into sections. She places snacks and drinks into the compartments and wheels the suitcase from her car to the vending machine.

READ the total interview on www.greatfallstribune.com with woman that dares doing business in her declining years.