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Pleasanton Gas Station owner Kim Do said every time she walks inside the shop, it’s like stepping inside a time machine that makes her feel like she is in her late 20s when she and her husband had just taken over the downtown business.
“When I step in here, I’m a young woman,” Do told the Weekly.
After nearly 35 years of operating the only gas station on Main Street, Do said she and her family are retiring on Feb. 27.
“From the bottom of my heart, I feel very sad,” Do said. “But the time had to come.”
Do arrived in the U.S. in 1982 at the age of 18, among the many Vietnamese refugees escaped the country following the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War.
According to Do, she fled from her homeland on a small, crowded boat in order to build a better future for herself.Â
Shortly after landing in the Bay Area, she met her future husband — who also immigrated to the U.S. two years earlier — in San Jose.
The couple, who still live in San Jose to this day, had been working for years in the South Bay before her husband was laid off. It was then that the two decided to take a leap of faith and take out loans to acquire the small gas station and convenience shop in the heart of downtown Pleasanton in 1993.
A staple of town for nearly a century, the four-pump station has been operating out of the corner of Main and St. Mary streets since 1931 after the Germania Hotel, which had stood on the site for decades, closed and the station was built on the property.
For Do, she has spent more than half of her life working at the gas station, but after her husband experienced some health issues at his advanced age, the couple realized it was time to step back. Do still works in San Jose, but because the business is in her husband’s name, they decided to retire from the Pleasanton Gas Station.Â
However, she said she still feels sad thinking about all of the people that she and her family have met and interacted with over the years on Main Street.Â
“I love the city of Pleasanton,” she said. “The people are very nice; the town is nice.”
She said she and her family are grateful for the community’s support over the years and that even thinking about her retirement date at the end of the month makes her tear up.
But she also said she still loves Pleasanton and her family will continue to visit at least once a week.
As for the future of the gas station, downtown property owner Bruce Torquemada said he recently acquired the business license for the station and will look to do some slight remodeling in order to make it look as close to how it did in 1931.
He said he plans on changing the name to P-town Pit Stop and make it more of an attraction for downtown Pleasanton by bringing back the old gas station service model where workers pump the gas for customers.
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