A Lot on Worried Restaurant Owner's Plate

Bills Stacking Up, Customers Rush To Raise Money

Everybody calls her Mama. She bought gloves and scarves for neighborhood children. For those with good grades, she gave away cheese steaks and burgers.

Now, Evangeline "Mama" Cole-Thompson needs help. Cole's Cafe, her restaurant in historic Anacostia, is behind on its bills and could close within weeks.

Two new commercial buildings are rising nearby, a new Jamaican restaurant recently opened a block away and houses are being built all around. But the idea of losing a beloved neighborhood fixture has galvanized some of her customers. They have banded together, making fliers and knocking on doors to solicit contributions.

"This is like our second home," said Marie Smith, a regular who moved to Southeast Washington more than 30 years ago. "We come here all the time."

Smith organized a fundraiser Thursday at the restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. It was sparsely attended, but as word has spread, residents have been showing up to stick donations into a box on the counter.

A sign on the door says Cole-Thompson needs 300 people to donate $100 each, or $30,000. It's short of the $50,000 required to get her back even but more than enough to pay her back rent and allow her to renew her $3,000-a-month lease.

Cole-Thompson, 54, said her financial problems were exacerbated this year when her husband and business partner, William Thompson, was paralyzed after a stroke. Bills and rent went unpaid because of doctors' bills, she said.

"I lost focus when my husband got sick," she said.

Cole-Thompson and her husband opened their first restaurant nearly a decade ago, renting a former Chinese carryout about four blocks from the current location, near Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Good Hope Road in Southeast.

Customers flocked there for ribs, meatloaf, turkey burgers, greens and yams. A portion of the business's earnings went to youths needing gloves and scarves. It also gave cheese steaks and burgers to neighborhood children with C's or better on their report cards.

Then a van rammed through the kitchen wall after its brakes apparently failed, barely missing her husband. The restaurant, already struggling financially, closed.

The couple set up a small shack next to a carwash. They sold breakfast and lunch, including pancakes, half-smokes and fried fish. In 2002, they opened Cole's Cafe, a cafeteria-style place with disposable plates and plastic cutlery. Loyal customers rave about the food, particularly the yams and the banana pudding.