Two RadioShack stores in Merced County closing, layoffs coming

Less than a week after Carrows Restaurant in Merced went out of business and laid off nearly 25 employees, two RadioShack stores in Merced County also will shut their doors.

The 95-year-old retail chain announced Feb. 5 that it will close more than 1,700 stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The RadioShack on Commerce Avenue in Atwater and the store on West Pacheco Boulevard in Los Banos are on the list of closures.

Eight employees at both stores were offered the option to transfer, officials said. The RadioShack store in the Merced Mall and one of two Turlock locations will remain open.

The manager of the soon-to-be-shuttered Atwater store said RadioShack was more than just a job to him. He got emotional talking about the closure Monday.

“It hurts because I was raised on RadioShack. It’s like losing part of the family,” said Frank Ruggiero, 53. “I’m a die-hard RadioShack fan; I’ve got old catalogs from the 70s. I fought a good fight. I went to war trying to keep this store open, and I lost.”

Ruggiero said he hosted customer appreciation events to garner more business. It worked for a little while. The Atwater store was scheduled to close last year, but remained open another year. But in the end, Ruggiero said, it wasn’t enough. RadioShack had trouble keeping up with lower prices offered by online retailers.

The last day for the Atwater store is Thursday. RadioShack has been a fixture in the city since the 1970s.

An estimated 20 to 25 employees lost their jobs when Carrows Restaurant in Merced turned off its lights last week. Attempts to reach officials at the restaurant’s Carlsbad headquarters were unsuccessful Monday, but county officials said the closure stemmed from a lease disagreement.

Whether a Merced County business closure results in one lost job or hundreds, the county has a “Rapid Response Team” that reaches out to dislocated workers. The team offers information about free services at the county’s two Worknet offices, including training, career coaching, résumé writing and computer courses.

The team reached out to Carrows and both RadioShack stores, county officials said, but were unable to arrange a presentation. They dropped off packets of information for employees instead.

“Ideally, we try to help them go directly into another job,” said Elena Blanton, Rapid Response coordinator for the county’s Department of Workforce Investment. “The longer someone is unemployed, it gets harder for people to get back into the swing of things.”

Back in Atwater, the job loss is even more painful for Ruggiero because he had a daughter one week ago.

Ruggiero, who managed the RadioShack for five years, was also laid off from Hollywood Video when that company closed. But Ruggiero said he’s not giving up hope. “As one door closes, another door opens,” he said. “God closed this one, but he gave me a daughter to focus on, and I have a lot of stuff ahead of me.”

This story was originally published February 23, 2015 at 9:59 PM with the headline "Two RadioShack stores in Merced County closing, layoffs coming."