Oak Harbor’s favorite store has a new manager.

Don’t expect to see any new faces next time you visit Ace Hardware, however. Cheryl Wieldraayer has been around the store for 20 years – it’s only her job title that has changed.

Owner and company President Lowell Petersen announced Wieldraayer’s promotion this week. “She deserves the recognition,” he said. “She’s going to be running the store.”

And he adds with a laugh that reveals that he’s not really serious: “I’ll retire again.”

In fact, Petersen will probably continued to spend a good deal of his time at the store he purchased 18 years ago. Wieldraayer was already working there then, when it was called Sebo’s Coast-to-Coast. She was originally hired by Jim Neil who still spends time around the store.

Ace Hardware could just as well change its name to Cheers Hardware – it’s the kind of place where everybody knows your name. It’s been the place to shop for generations of Oak Harbor residents. “I’ve seen kids grow up and they still shop here,” Wieldraayer said.

Ace Hardware has been a fixture on Pioneer Way for decades with its roughly 28,000 square feet packed with housewares, sporting goods, paint, plumbing and garden supplies and much more.

Its philosophy of providing an old fashioned, hometown shopping experience hasn’t changed despite the arrival of big chain stores as competition.

“We’re always voted the best store in customer service and we’re all hometown people,” Petersen said. “No matter how many big boxes they bring in, we’re still the home store.”

Wieldraayer concurs with her boss’s philosophy.

“There’s a lot of personal services you don’t get at the bigger places,” she said. “That’s why people keep coming back.”

She has seen Kmart, Wal-Mart and now Home Depot come to town, but Ace Hardware has thrived despite the competition. The parking lot is often full and the aisles filled with customers shopping and asking questions of the friendly and knowledgeable staff.

Wielderaayer in fact is reluctant to call herself the store manager, although she obviously knows every nook and cranny in the store. A brief conversation is interrupted by a query from an employee. “The tarpaper should be in the paint department,” she replies.

She credits the store’s success and good management to Lowell Petersen; Mary Lawson, office manager and system manager; Kevin Petersen, sporting goods and floor manager; and the rest of the store’s 35 employees.

To her, the store provides a family atmosphere. “They’re very good to me her,” Wieldraayer said. A few years ago she was fighting breast cancer and for eight months she was in and out of the store, sometimes too sick to work. “I couldn’t come in and work after chemo, but they kept my job for me,” she said. “I can’t run the store without the help of everybody else.”

A new manager for sure, but it’s a very familiar face in the same friendly store. Oak Harbor residents wouldn’t want it any other way.