Cancer took his son at age 9. This California dad opened candy shops to carry on his memory

Two movies play on loops inside Sawyer’s Sweet Spot: the 1971 version of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, and a video encapsulating the last year of Sawyer Orion Rummelhart’s life.

Six years have passed since 9-year-old Sawyer died of Burkitt lymphoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer. Yet his memory and spirit greet customers every day at candy shops in Woodland and Yuba City, thanks to his father Richard Rummelhart.

There’s Sawyer on the screen, all smiles and tickles and dance parties despite a hairless head and tubes sticking out of his nostrils. Few mainland candy shops sell shave ice, but Sawyer loved the Hawaiian freezes so much that his family bought a machine (now in the Yuba City store) to make it at home before he got sick.

Rummelhart built a small boat named the S.S. Sawyer, which sits filled with saltwater taffy at the Woodland store’s entrance. A few small tables in the back of the store and a city-sponsored parklet out front helps create a more communal feel — customers can sit and chat rather than just grabbing their sweets and taking off.

Candy is unabashed indulgence. There’s nothing healthy about it, and you won’t see effort to convince people otherwise.

For Rummelhart and his customers who have experienced similarly heartbreaking losses, that indulgence is a sweet escape, a cheery respite from grief and hospitals and whatever else is weighing on them that day.

“When you go through the doors into Sawyer’s Sweet Spot, it’s an opportunity to forget all the problems going on outside in the real world and just come in to have a treat and enjoy some time with your family and your friends,” Rummelhart said. “It’s the way that Sawyer would want it.”

Options abound at Sawyer’s Sweet Spot. It offers nostalgic treats such as Abba-Zabas and Big Hunks, and pucker-inducing Toxic Waste barrels for more youthful taste buds. A fridge is full of themed sodas and energy drinks — try the “Ted Lasso” one to get hopped up like Jason Sudeikis’ titular character on the Apple TV show.

Few candy stores double as full-scale ice cream shops, but Sawyer’s Sweet Spot does, with scoops and sundaes coming from The Good Scoop in Dixon and Tillamook and Cascade Glacier in Oregon.

Spending so much time in a shrine to his lost son wasn’t easy at first. Over the years, though, it helped Rummelhart heal. He’ll still take a minute to watch Sawyer’s video play when opening or closing, but he rarely gets misty-eyed in the store anymore.

“Early on, it was hard to hold back tears because it was so fresh. And then talking to families who are going through (something similar), and they start crying, that’s tough,” Rummelhart said. “But it also ends up being a happy feeling in the end because there’s a relief, that, hey, there’s hope. There can be hope even after the passing of a child.”

A SUDDEN LOSS

Sawyer was an athletic, healthy kid with a competitive streak, a love for the Seattle Seahawks football team and “a massive sweet tooth,” his mother and Rummelhart’s ex-wife Kelly Enders-Tharp said. When his older step-brother Charlie started doing timed math problems in school, Sawyer made his parents clock him as well, repeating the problems until he had his fastest round possible.

“(He was) kind and smart and funny. When you talk about the ‘total package’ thing when it comes to having a kiddo, you could not have asked for a better kid to parent,” Enders-Tharp said.

His medical problems started with a tummy ache and constipation, Enders-Tharp said. Sawyer’s family physician said it didn’t seem serious, even as the pain persisted and kept him up at night. But Enders-Tharp made him stop off at urgent care as they were heading out to a trampoline park one Sunday in April 2015.

The urgent care visit turned into emergency surgery to determine what was wrong in his intestines. He would need to skip the next day of school – Foskett Ranch Elementary in Lincoln – breaking his perfect attendance streak since starting kindergarten nearly four years before.

“He got diagnosed in April and we said, ‘OK, it’s three or four months of treatment, he should be back (in class) by September. It’s a blip on the radar but should be back in school around the start of the next year,’” Enders-Tharp said. “Never in our mind was survival not part of the plan.”

Sawyer needed an ileostomy, a procedure when the small intestine is diverted through a surgically-cut hole in the abdominal wall. Next came chemotherapy and a central venous catheter, commonly known as a Broviac, that pumped him full of treatments.

While Sawyer received care at Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center, Rummelhart ripped the carpet out of his home and replaced it with hardwood floors, which could be easier cleaned to prevent bacteria from infecting his son’s weakened immune system. Sawyer’s family had to adjust to changing the ileostomy bag and Broviac daily, while shuttling him between his parents’ respective houses in Lincoln and Yuba City.

His prognosis initially appeared to improve as chemotherapy eradicated most of Sawyer’s cancer. But a PET scan showed a few “troubling spots” doctors said they would have to monitor, Rummelhart said.

Those spots were cancer cells, and they proved resilient, withstanding a different chemotherapy treatment and swelling his abdomen to the point where the tumor broke skin.

A support team rallied. Seattle Seahawks players such as quarterback Russell Wilson, running back Robert Turbin and cornerback Richard Sherman called or recorded videos wishing their fan well.

When Sawyer grew too sick to attend school, a teacher reviewed lesson plans with him in the hospital while a stuffed monkey kept his classroom seat warm. Popular local radio station 107.9 The End renamed itself Sawyer 107.9 for a day.

As the cancer grew, doctors determined a stem cell transplant— previously thought of as a last resort — wouldn’t be effective. Finally, with Richard, Enders-Tharp and Sawyer’s two stepmoms gathered around Sawyer’s hospital bed, a doctor broke the news that their son’s cancer was terminal in November 2015.

“We just huddled in a ball and cried it out for a few minutes,” Rummelhart said.

“And then right after that, we said, ‘OK, Sawyer, what do you want to do?’ Two minutes he cried, and then he’s like ‘you know what? I want to go get a taco.’”

Sawyer got his taco. Three months later, he died in Enders-Tharp’s home in Lincoln, where his blended family had stayed together for the last week of his life.

SWEET MEMORIES

A sales manager by trade, Rummelhart had long wanted to buy the regionally famous Penny Candy Store in Live Oak, which he grew up visiting with his mom on trips to Sutter County. But it wasn’t available in 2015, so he and his then-wife Cameo Arrasmith began looking for a place to open their store.

Sawyer’s cancer delayed that opening, but ultimately gave Rummelhart and Arrasmith the store’s name. The first Sawyer’s Sweet Spot opened in Yuba City, where Richard and Arrasmith had been living, in 2016, followed by the Woodland store in 2018.

It has the requisite containers of Jelly Bellys and Nerds among the 110 bulk candies for sale, watched over by “Harry Potter” characters Severus Snape and Dobby the House-Elf. One of Rummelhart’s fraternity brothers from his years at Chico State makes large-scale window displays of hit children’s movies; “Encanto” currently peeks out at prospective customers.

Yet Sawyer’s Sweet Spot has a grown-up element as well, as seen in the display case of Le Grand Confectionary truffles from Loomis and decadent Chocolove chocolate bars.

Sawyer’s Sweet Spot donates some proceeds to Unravel Pediatric Cancer, which raises money to fund research, and Camp Okizu, an outdoor escape for affected children that’s trying to reestablish itself after the 2020 Bear Fire ripped through its Berry Creek facility. Enders-Tharp also established a website called “Live Like Soy” encouraging others to emulate her late son and keep his memory alive.

Rummelhart and Arrasmith separated in 2019, and he bought her half of the business in spring 2021. He’s now the sole proprietor of both stores, which are otherwise staffed by part-time employees.

It’s perhaps surprising, then, that Rummelhart is selling Sawyer’s Sweet Spot’s Woodland location at 528 Main St. He’s stretched too thin to run both in addition to the marketing company he just started (candy shop owner doesn’t fully pay the bills) and wants to focus his efforts in Yuba City.

“If I could find someone that I feel could keep this legacy going, then perhaps we could find a new owner that could help enlighten further this beautiful spot in downtown Woodland,” he said.

Plus, Rummelhart says, they’ll have the shop’s inspiration looking down on them.

“I’m not a big religious person. I’m more agnostic. (But) I believe there’s a higher power out there, and I’d really like to believe that I’ll get to see my son again,” Rummelhart said. “I do have people that come in and say, ‘I can feel Sawyer’s presence too and you will get to see him again,’ and that makes me feel really good.”

“He’s watching over us. No doubt. He wants more shave ice.”

This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 5:25 AM.