Today, she alters for the better the lives of dozens of others, a few minutes at a time, every single day.

At the time of the accident, Ms. Shirley, as she’s known by anyone who’s ever met the spunky and spry 82-year-old, was juggling two customer service jobs. She ran Shirley’s Mini-mart on Brownsferry Road in Athens and delivered a newspaper motor route, something she had done for 34 years.

It was on the paper route in 1996 that Shirley was struck by another vehicle, an incident that would require several operations, a painful and lengthy rehabilitation, and a limited mobility that would eventually mean she no longer could service customers at the small store she had built into a neighborhood gathering place.

Serendipitously though, it had been her work at the market which would eventually offer an even brighter future.

Years before the accident, a customer at the mart had casually mentioned that he had a tanning bed he wanted to sell. He offered it to Ms. Shirley, who at the time had never thought about owning a tanning bed, let alone what she would do with the thing. She asked him how much he wanted for it. When he said, “$25,” she snapped it up.

“I got a good deal,” Ms. Shirley says. And then she went on running her store and driving her paper route, putting the tanning bed aside.

The catastrophic car accident changed all of that, said Shirley’s daughter, Renee Rogers. Always one to help her mom in whatever she chose to do, the one thing Rogers knew her mom couldn’t do, after recovery, was sit around doing nothing. But the store had been sold and newspaper delivery was no longer a viable option.

Yet they still had the tanning bed.

It was about that time, Rogers said, that they learned of a small business that was available for sale — a tanning salon in Athens that already had two beds. Realizing that such a project would be much less active than running a store, Ms. Shirley rented the space she still occupies now on Washington Street, and a tanning salon business went from two beds to three. Then four. Then five. And to those five they added a standup carrel. Despite a local tanning bed culture that at one time would include as many as four competitors, Tropic Tan was thriving — and continues to do so today, seeing between 110 and 160 customers each day.

Rogers is quick to explain why their business has been so successful when others fell away — and why today there is only one other tanning salon in the Athens market.

“Everybody loves Ms. Shirley,” she says.

Spend any amount of time in the front office of the building and you’ll see that what Rogers says is true. Not only do customers sail through her revolving door for a 3- to 15-minute session — Rogers and Shirley have become experts on tanning, bulbs and their products, and know, for safety reasons, how long each customer’s time should be allotted, which they manage from a control panel at Ms. Shirley’s station behind the desk — but dozens of people stop in just to chat with Ms. Shirley, grab a hug and a smile and go on their way.

“She’s everybody’s mom,” Rogers says. “She’s the sweet, little lady that people come in for.”

One of those people, on a sunny and unseasonably warm March day, was Bill Owens, a former coach and school administrator who had served many positions, including that of principal, at Tanner High School for 34 years.

Owens has been a customer of the shop for 25 years — since his wife once demanded he go there to work on his tan before setting off on a vacation a generation ago — and the reason he’s stayed with the business, he says, is simple.

“It’s the atmosphere,” Owens says. … “And to see Ms. Shirley.”

Another visitor that morning had a similar explanation for stopping by.

Tommy Morris didn’t come by for a tanning session. Morris is actually Ms. Shirley’s long-time mechanic. He was just stopping by to check on her — and get a hug.

“She is one the best women you’ll meet,” he says.

Between Ms. Shirley’s inviting demeanor and care for her customers — she’ll call to check on them if she hasn’t seen them in a few days — and prices that Rogers says are “much too low,” according to those they meet at tanning conventions — “We don’t care what they say,” Rogers says. “This is Limestone County. We live paycheck-to-paycheck just like our customers.” — it’s little surprise that Tropic Tan has become a generational business. The children, and even grandchildren of their original customers now come into tan — often on a package deal that, uncharacteristically in the salon business, can be shared among family members.

And all of this is exactly the way Ms. Shirley wants it. After all, the shop is more than a business to the octogenarian.

“I just love it,” Ms. Shirley says. “It’s the customers. I don’t know what I’d do without them. This is my home away from home. When I’m not here, I can get lonesome.”