Most folks her age count pills; Ann Angeletti counts carats. She is 101 and still flips the sign on Curiosity Jewelers six mornings a week. Tuesday through Saturday she stands behind the glass cases in Cresskill, New Jersey, polishing rings and memories. On the seventh day she drives herself to Manhattan’s Diamond District, a half-hour trip she has taken for decades, to trade gold and gossip with dealers half her age.
She opened the shop in 1964 when rent was eighty-five dollars and gumption was free. The space was tiny, the risk large, but she had already survived the Depression, a world war, and every “no” a woman could hear. Today her daughter and granddaughter work beside her, turning the store into a three-woman song that spans a century.
People ask for her secret and she shrugs: wake up, wash, eat, move. She parks her own car, climbs her own stairs, and lifts tiny trays of sapphires like they are feathers. “If I sit still, the earth will swallow me,” she jokes, though her eyes say she means it. Retirement sounds like a slow death, so she chooses the chime of the doorbell over the hush of a beach chair.
Her advice is as plain as the apron she still ties: if the day feels heavy, change the day, not yourself. Passion, she insists, is cheaper than medicine and works twice as fast. While other centenarians trade stories in care homes, Ann trades diamonds and proves that a heartbeat stays steady when it has something to look forward to every sunrise.
