Pojo's Country Store, on N.M. 502, is in an iconic space. It occupies a building where Ponce Lujan's Service Station served Pojoaque Valley patrons for approximately
50 years. And when you look out the store's south window, you see the Ben Luján Gymnasium, home of the reigning state champion Class AAA girls basketball team.

Before they opened on
May 1, Pojo's owners, Janet and Ernie Saucedo, didn't know what to name their business. Natives of California, struggling with the spelling of Pojoaque, they looked out the store's window, saw the gym sign and the name Pojo's popped into their minds.

Janet Saucedo, sitting at a table in the window of Pojo's, traffic zooming by, said she and her husband, a lifelong denizen of Los Angeles, were first invited to New Mexico a few years ago.

"My husband had never been to New Mexico," she said. "When we were invited, he said, 'Aren't we going to need a passport?' "

She said her husband made the first trip alone and, upon arriving, immediately called her on the telephone to express his fascination with New Mexico. He said, "You're not going to believe this. L.A. has movie stars, but New Mexico has real stars, almost every night."

Escaping the L.A. smog, the couple moved to Alcalde. They both went to work for the Santa Fe County Corrections Department.

Janet resigned after three years, saying, "Sometimes too much is too much. You can only eat so much sushi." Ernie resigned a week later, and they were both unemployed.

"I had driven by Ponce's empty station, taking my two sons to school," she said. "That's how I got the idea of opening a general store."

Before the couple made the jump into the entrepreneurial realm — in a shaky economy — they did a little market research.

"I talked with people in the valley, and to a person they told me, 'We need that place to open. Your idea for a business will work.' A lot of the people I talked with said Ponce's was a community meeting place and since the closing of the post office, there was no place to meet, get the paper and gossip."

And so, despite the couple's initial anxiety about opening a business in a failing economy, they set out on their new venture.

At this time, Pojo's is a work in process. Like most country stores, it sells a variety of merchandise, including coffee, fishing gear, picnic items and pre-packaged burritos and sandwiches.

A lot of customers, Janet Saucedo said, have requested homemade breakfast burritos, and they're high on her to-do list.

Asked why Pojo's doesn't sell gasoline, she said Ponce Lujan had the holding tanks removed when he went out of business about three years ago. "We'd like to sell gas, but at this time we don't have the money to install new tanks."

Another item that may be sold down the road is the much requested New York Times, which would make Pojo's the only store in Pojoaque selling the paper.

Since so many of her customers are Pojoaque High School students, she said there are plans are to convert part of the store into a laser tag area or something similar that caters to students.

After living in California,
Janet Saucedo said she loves New Mexico for its natural beauty, but most of all "because people stop in and have the time to talk and make you feel like you're home."