A community comes together to help a bakery stay open.
The Balkan Bakery in Flint is back open after facing some financial hardship.
Barbara Reiff's bakery had been closed for six weeks because she couldn't afford an outstanding $12,000 electric bill.
"You got to have people living here to work here. If they work out of town they are buying their stuff here," she said. "Things are kind of unsettled. You don't have to know when you're going to have your money available for your bills."
The Balkan Bakery has been around since the early 1900s. Reiff's father took it over in the 1940s
"They still had a horse and wagon back then," she said. "Eventually it was my mother and my dad and then me."
With business slowing down and the added inconvenience of using bottled water due to the Flint water crisis, Reiff prayed for help and got it on the Internet.
Some customers set up a GoFundMe page to help her raise the money she needed to get the power back on.
She said, "I was shocked. I'm very impressed. I'm really appreciative. It helped a lot. I didn't realize I had that many friends."
Rose McAlear is a lifelong customer. She explained, "So often times this happens to business and we don't know but as soon as people knew about it they did everything they could to help."
Now that the bakery is back open, Reiff is hoping for a lot of sales in the next few weeks, especially on Easter.
