Huntley woman makes jewelry for therapy
While Gladys Vega of Huntley remains in constant pain, she has found her solace in jewelry making.
The 65-year-old damaged her spine in 2007 by trying to pick up a heavy box while on the job. The two surgeries she’s had since haven’t done much to restore her mobility and she’s due to have a third.
Vega can’t sit for long periods of time, uses a walker to get around and needs help bathing and changing her clothes.
What saddens her the most is she can’t dance anymore. She and her husband César Vega hail from Peru and dancing is a very important part of their culture.
“You have no idea how horrible my life is with this pain,” Gladys Vega said. “But I can’t let the pain make me down, I always fight it.”
When she’s making her jewelry, she finds herself in another zone.
Her face beams when she proudly shows off the stones she uses in her work and when she explains where they came from — her brother Hernan Velasquez sends them to her from Peru. Her inventory includes onyx, turquoise and tiger eye.
“I like it because I forget about everything,” she said, adding that making bracelets, rings and necklaces is her version of therapy and keeps her brain busy.
She had been making jewelry on and off since high school and started out making pieces for her family.
But she stopped after her accident.
César Vega, 73, her husband of 43 years, wasn’t about to let her quit.
One day last year, one of their sons was putting her jewelry materials in the attic. César Vega went up there and brought the materials back downstairs and to his wife.
“I told her ‘why don’t you do this so you can enjoy and forget about your pain?,’” he said.
Gladys Vega and her husband, a retired mechanical engineer, have been married since 1969. They met in Chicago while grocery shopping and wed after a year of dating.
Throughout her life, Gladys Vega worked as a certified photographer who developed and restored old photographs. She also worked in a bank proofing departments where she reviewed checks before they went to computers for processing. She was working at a big-box home improvement store as a cashier at the time of her accident.
The couple left South Barrington and moved to the Sun City community in 2006.
César Vega, an artist in his own right who created a replica of the Eiffel Tower out of 5,800 toothpicks, has taken it upon himself to help his wife shine.
He promotes her wares to her doctors and to anyone he meets. She has turned it into a side job and is making some money for herself.
When she’s not making jewelry, he tries to make life as comfortable for her as possible. He shuttles her back and forth to her doctor’s appointments, looks after her on the weekends when the therapist and caretaker aren’t around and does all of the cooking.
“I do everything for her,” he said.
She quipped, “Well, it’s about time, because I did everything for him!”
If you’d like to order jewelry from Gladys Vega, call (847) 669-5346.