HustINHart is owned by Jessica Rael, a Red River and Questa native whose family’s entrepreneurial spirit is flourishing in the northern New Mexico community. Jessica opened her gift shop in the summer of 2022, and you can find unique New Mexico shirts, jewelry, and snacks unlike any other in Red River.
“I love being unique and using my own creativity to build our brand,” Rael says of her recent business venture. With roots deep in the Questa and Red River area, Jessica has a love for the Zia symbol and incorporates it into many of the products sold in the shop
Jessica is a single mom of two girls, Angelica and Alexis. She has worked for 15 years at the University of New Mexico Hospital, currently as a Cyber Security Analyst. During the weekends while her daughters were growing up, Rael would travel home to Red River to waitress at her mother Dee Sims’ restaurant, Yesterday’s Diner. There, her girls learned the meaning of hard work, oftentimes working step-in-step with their mom as all three of them waitressed through the weekends and summer days.
Both of Jessica’s daughters recently graduated high school and she quickly found herself an empty nester. “My whole identity was being a mom and one day, it just felt like I wasn’t needed anymore– there is a lot of grief in that,” Jessica notes of the experience seeing her daughters grow up and move on to college.
In addition to the big shift in her role as a mother, she lost her father Russell Church to cancer in the summer of 2021. “There is nothing like losing a parent. They are the only person who will always be there for you and no one will ever love you like that again,” she says reflecting of the impact she felt when her dad died.
Channeling her grief, Rael leaned on her natural-born entrepreneurial talents to turn her mourning into something good. “My daughters got me a Cricut machine for Mother’s Day and one day, I just wanted to see what I could do then I realized wow, this is cool! She quickly purchased a variety of equipment and over the next several months, Jessica worked to build up her online following on her HustINHart Facebook page, selling custom-made orders and shipping them across the country which led to building a website. The true test was when her mother, Dee also decided to sell some of her items outside of her restaurant to gauge the tourist interest in her products. The result? A smashing success!
The response Jessica saw to custom-designed goods was enough to give her confidence to open a shop in the same building where her mom runs and operates Yesterday’s Diner. She’s been in business for nearly a year now and feels this was the right decision to continue to foster her passion and business interests in one.
When asked if she was anxious about running a business remotely in Red River while living in Albuquerque, Jessica was quick to point to her support system. “My family and I are always there for each other, and we pull through together when we need to so that gave me a lot of comfort and confidence to move forward.” Jessica notes her brother Stuart Church also recently just purchased Red River Mountain Adventures in town and is always willing to support her and her mom, a true entrepreneurial support system in the Red River Valley.
HustINHart is located in the same building as Yesterday’s Diner at 612 W. Main St. Red River, NM 87558. The hours are updated regularly on google and on the social media pages.
