Bird Street Thrift opened its doors at the close of 1998 under the name, Oroville Rescue Mission Thrift Shoppe. The store opened as a vocational training component of the Mission’s New Life Recovery Program. Intended to be a training facility as well as a fund-raising endeavor, Bird Street Thrift has, for almost 2 decades, provided affordable nearly new merchandise in a clean and friendly atmosphere.

New Life Recovery Students help run the store and they receive experience in cashiering, warehousing, merchandising, stocking and janitorial, as well as Life Skills training in job readiness, appearance, customer relations, customer service and punctuality,

While doing some minor building repairs, former store manager, Josh Hengel discovered a sealed off crawl space beneath the store which contained remnants of a ‘still and paraphernalia for manufacturing bootleg liquor, decades old beer cans, and even a prescription for medicinal alcohol from the Prohibition Era.