Lisa Spurney saw the recession coming a year or so before it hit as foot traffic withered away for her business, Bogy's Barkery and the Palette, at 1014 24th St. in midtown Sacramento.

She'd thrived for seven years, but businesses around her were closing and hers did the same six years ago. Now she's returning to the same location.

Could her new venture, Paws and the Palette, be a symbol that the phoenix is rising? The 44-year-old vegan told me that she thinks it is.

"We've been looking for (a space) for the last year, and (our former landlord) Jimmie Yee ... let us know that it was coming open again," Spurney said. "It was really short timing, but … we thought it would be really great just to open in the same spot. Cornerstone had closed over on the corner, and they reopened about a month ago also, just a store over."

The name of Spurney's business has changed, she said, but she still sells gourmet treats, accessories, art and furniture for pets. People will find a few pet-themed items for themselves as well.

Due to the tight turnaround, the cat section won't be up and running until January, but Paws and the Palette is open Tuesdays through Saturdays.

Like father, like ...

Roger Schrimp saw the lawyer that his daughter Angela would become way back in the 1970s, so he dragged her along to the office and to depositions and even to "father-son" functions.

"She'd sit at my desk and write all kinds of notes to me, and she'd write memos to my legal assistants and paralegals also," he said.

The elder Schrimp, named to a Northern California legal publication's list of super lawyers since 2007, tried to persuade Angela to join him at Damrell Nelson Schrimp Pallios Pacher & Silva in Modesto when she graduated from law school at UC Davis roughly 20 years ago.

"The timing just wasn't right for me, and it is now," said the 44-year-old Angela Schrimp de la Vergne. "I think there were a lot of components related to the parent-child relationships and needing to establish your own space. You reach a point in your life where you really value those relationships."

In other words, now is the time. Schrimp de la Vergne resigned three months ago as a partner in the law firm of Knox Lemmon Anapolsky & Schrimp, in Sacramento. She's reopening the Sacramento office for Modesto-based Damrell Nelson and will continue her practice in business transactions and litigation.

Many veterans of the legal community will recall when Frank C. Damrell Jr., the retired federal judge, was a successful lobbyist here for the firm, then called Damrell Damrell & Nelson.

The other Damrell was the federal judge's father. Earlier this year, Damrell Jr. opened a Sacramento office for Burlingame-based Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy.

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