Columnist Susan Snyder: Her door to happiness is ajar

Friday, Jan. 24, 2003 | 9:04 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Yolie Chapman's key to independence is sealed inside a Ball jar.

The 65-year-old North Las Vegas widow hasn't been able to return to her two part-time jobs since she had surgery Dec. 22.

And as medical bills, medicine costs and other living expenses such as car payments mount, Chapman has been at work in her kitchen creating distinctive cakes she hopes others will like enough to buy, if she can find a way to sell them.

Several of us here at the nut factory tasted "Yolie's Cakes in a Jar," and Chapman is absolutely right when she says they're not something you'd take home to your family.

She says they're something you'd save for gifts. I say you'd do well to grab a fork, lock yourself in a closet and refuse to share them with anyone. These concoctions are really good.

She makes the cakes in many flavors, including pumpkin spice, amaretto and banana-butterscotch. Each is sealed in a Ball jar. How she gets them in there is a secret akin to building a ship in a bottle. (She won't tell you, so why should I?)

Chapman moved to the Las Vegas Valley from California in 1999, shortly after her husband died. She says she sold floral arrangements, gift baskets, clothing and jewelry at rented swap meet booths then opened her own boutique on Decatur Boulevard.

"I had built a new home," she said. "Then I had a heart attack and six angioplasties. Within a year-and-a-half I lost everything."

Chapman took on two part-time jobs, one selling security systems and a second at a shop in the Aladdin. But she underwent a hernia operation in May and lost her apartment during the recovery process. In September a friend helped her move into the Carefree Senior Living villas where she now resides. But she needed a second hernia operation in December.

That one, she says, has been harder to bounce back from. She hasn't been able to return to either of her jobs, and her husband's U.S. Air Force pension won't cover all her medical bills and living expenses. The bills from December's surgery haven't even started arriving yet.

"I am starting over at 65," she said. "I have nothing left."

Nothing, other than determination, skill and a thick spiral notebook of recipes, most of which she created when she and her husband lived in Saudi Arabia during the 1980s.

Masks, sculptures, paintings and other pieces of art in her home provide snapshots of the couple's journeys through Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

But the journey she is now making alone is arduous. She suspects it is one that many seniors endure. Retirement isn't carefree for those who can't afford to do it or don't want to.

Chapman would like to acquire a business license and rent some kitchen space to bake her wares with other seniors who would like to do the same. But for now she must focus on recovering physically and financially.

"I want to get myself out of this predicament," Chapman said. "But at 65, people don't want to hire you. They want to throw you away."

So she bakes her cakes and sits at her kitchen table wrapping them for all occasions -- weddings, baby showers, Valentine's Day. Prices start at $10. People can place orders by calling 813-2356.

"I'm trying my best," Chapman said. "I know that I'm a survivor."