Extending an olive branch

Good morning! Today is Monday, February 9, 2026. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.

Need to subscribe — or upgrade your Ledger e-newsletter subscription? Details here.

Today’s Ledger is sponsored by Robinson Bradshaw, an esteemed Carolinas-based corporate law firm committed to providing clients with comprehensive legal services of the highest quality.

by Carroll Walton

Heather Finke put her Jeep in gear. She pressed the gas pedal, ready to pull forward out of a parking space onto East Boulevard to get on with her errands.

Backward was the direction she went instead, over a sidewalk and into the storefront of Pour Olive, a specialty olive oil and vinegar store.

The spare tire on the back of her Jeep Wrangler struck an 8-by-8-foot window, producing a cacophony of shattering glass.

In the midst of the early holiday rush on a Monday in December, everything screeched to a halt.

“There were glass shards everywhere,” Finke said.

She was met on the sidewalk by the owners of Abode, the furniture store she’d just left on her way to look for a dress to wear to her niece’s wedding in Cabo, Mexico, where she was headed in three days.

Their first reaction, Finke said, was to ask if she was OK. Then they texted Sophie Jones, the owner of Pour Olive. Finke looked around for a broom.

Jones, who opened Pour Olive with her then-husband Doug in 2013, had just gotten home from dropping her three sons off at school. She was catching her breath. The store was closed on Mondays.

At first, she thought the text message was a joke. Her shop window had to be repaired before, when a vandal threw a flagpole through it and ran.

“I know the amount of glass there is to clean up,” she said.

She also knew the cost, and that it meant the storefront would be boarded up at the busiest, most important, time of year.

When Jones pulled into the parking lot, Finke met her at her car door.

“She was so apologetic,” Jones recalled. “She had this sunshine energy. I took a deep breath and thought, ‘This is going to be OK.’”

Finke had already called a builder, Andrew Roby, who was sending somebody out. So Jones, who was met by a patron wanting to buy olive oil, unlocked the door and let him in.

The window was tempered glass, so it had shattered into what seemed like a million pieces. For the next several hours, Finke and Jones swept glass, dumping it into cardboard boxes, and talked.

“I have three boys, she has three boys and two girls,” Jones said. “We were just talking about kids.”

Workers from Andrew Roby arrived and took measurements to order a new window. They moved a dumpster from behind the store to discard the glass. Jones called a handyman to board it up. Finke held up plywood while he drilled, then she paid him.

Finke offered to pick up lunch at Kid Cashew next door. While she was waiting, she sent text messages to 30 of her friends, explaining “what a cluck” she’d been, that she’d driven into the storefront of Pour Olive. She asked them to visit the store soon to buy olive oil and vinegar.

Then Finke took lunch back to the store, where she and Jones found a spot to sit down and eat.

“By the end of the day, I felt like we were friends enough where I could say ‘Hey, you didn’t get to go shopping for your dress,’” Jones said.

Jones then told her about two dresses she’d just ordered. They’d arrived that morning. She showed Finke pictures from the online catalog on her phone and offered to let her borrow them.

At first Finke said she’d just pull something out of her closet, but then thought, “Why not?”

Once the glass was discarded and the window boarded up, Finke bought six sets of olive oil and vinegar, for each of her five children and for her and her husband. Then she followed Jones to her Dilworth home a short drive away to see the dresses.

“She had a gorgeous, designer dress,” Finke said. “It still had the price tag on it. She had a second one from the same store, equally expensive, equally beautiful. She said, ‘Just take them and see if they fit.’ I can’t believe I took them to wear, but I did.”

A few hours later, Finke texted Jones that she had ordered pre-lit garland from Amazon to make the Pour Olive plywood “look not so plywoody.” She vowed to help hang it after she got back from Mexico.

That weekend, Jones texted to see if she was having a good time at the wedding. Finke texted Jones a picture of her wearing one of the borrowed dresses.

After she got back, Finke had the dresses dry cleaned and returned them to Jones along with some homemade chicken tetrazzini.

When Jones texted her to say thanks, she wrote: “I’m sad this is all over and I won’t have you popping in the store.” Finke promised to keep coming back.

Nearly every day for three weeks, Jones said, a new customer came to the shop, pointed to the plywood and said, “That was my friend who drove through your window.”

If you ask Jones and Finke about the story, they’ll rave about the other. Finke says of Jones, “She’s a lovely human being.”

Said Jones, “She could have absolutely stuck a Post-It note on my door and said ‘Sorry, oops, I drove through your window,’ and left. I didn’t even expect her to still be there when I pulled up. Now I have a new friend over it, and we got a bunch of new customers.”

Jones said she’d been reminded of an incident last summer in a grocery store parking lot, when another driver scraped her car trying to pull into a nearby spot. He got defensive and angry, refusing to exchange contact information.

“I walked away in shock, but asking myself, ‘What’s the lesson here?’” Jones said. “Every curveball thrown my way, I ask that question.”

She and Finke both discovered the richness in responding to a crisis with grace.

“If I had shown up to the shop that morning mad, cold and closed off, I would have missed out on getting to know a true treasure of a human,” Jones said.

“It’s been a blessing,” Finke said.

Carroll Walton is a longtime journalist and freelance writer who now authors The Ledger’s weekly Fútbol Friday newsletter on Charlotte FC. Reach her at [email protected].

Today’s supporting sponsor is Landon A. Dunn, attorney-at-law in Matthews:

The Charlotte region added more jobs than any other metro area in the country except New York City in 2025, bucking the national trend toward slower hiring, according to Labor Department statistics released Friday.

Although Charlotte is fast-growing in population, the news is still surprising because our region is nowhere near the largest. The Charlotte metro area, with about 2.9 million residents, ranks No. 21 in the country.

Yet the 37,600 jobs that the Labor Department said were created in the Charlotte region in 2025 were second only to the New York City region, which is seven times the size of Charlotte and added 48,400 jobs. The figures show that the Charlotte region created more jobs in 2025 than 44 states.

We thrashed a lot of our peer cities, including Austin, Texas (+10,100); Atlanta (-300); Dallas (+14,200); Nashville (+12,400) and Tampa, Fla. (+14,400). The Raleigh-Durham area, which is counted in the statistics as two metro areas, gained 16,500 jobs.

“Charlotte is probably one of the best job markets in the country right now,” said economist Mark Vitner of Charlotte-based Piedmont Crescent Capital. “People are moving here because there are a lot of jobs. When you add a lot of people, it creates a lot of jobs, too. … Charlotte is just having a moment right now where we are the hot thing.”

He said some of the signs have been pointing to stronger Charlotte job growth lately, including apartments and offices filling more quickly than anticipated. The region has about 1.43 million workers.

Charlotte also had a gangbusters 2025 for attracting new companies: The city’s economic development office said in December that Charlotte had its best year for business recruitment in more than a decade, with 15 announcements totaling nearly 4,000 jobs and more than $424M in investments — with “no sign of slowdown in 2026.”

The pace of jobs Charlotte added in 2025 is more than twice as many as in 2024, when Labor Department figures show the region created about 16,000 jobs.

Nationally, companies added 525,000 jobs in 2025, a far slower pace than the 2.1 million created in 2024.

Vitner said he expects the numbers to be revised to show less growth in Charlotte than the initial numbers indicate, but that the region will still show strong job growth: “Relative to other areas, we will still be one of the best in the country.” —Tony Mecia

Related Ledger article:

It’s a familiar Valentine’s Day scene: panicked men speed-dialing florists or scouring the picked-over flower display at Harris Teeter at 4:57 p.m. on Feb. 13. (Valentine’s Day is on Saturday, by the way.) So, if you want to secure the perfect bouquet ahead of time, there are a few things you need to know.

At Midwood Flower Shop, a family-owned florist on Central Avenue, orders start rolling in on the first of the month, said Shelly Blanton, who handles marketing. Historically, the shop sells out of delivery slots about a week in advance, and the coolers that store all the flowers are nearly empty five days before Feb. 14.

Valentine’s Day, she says, is the “Super Bowl for florists” — right up there with Mother’s Day. This year, falling on a Saturday only adds to the rush.

What’s trending: Red roses may be a classic, but they’re no longer the automatic go-to, Blanton said, especially among late-20s and early-30s buyers, who make up much of the shop’s clientele for the holiday. Instead, customers are requesting more pinks, purples and more textured, design-forward arrangements instead of a simple, clean dozen roses.

Premium blooms are leading the charge, Blanton said. Customers are specifically asking for peonies, tulips, ranunculus and calla lilies, and skipping carnations altogether. Many buyers come in knowing exactly what they want, but some trust Midwood Flower Shop, which has been in operation since 1956, to handle it.

There are two clear camps when it comes to spending, she said. Some customers ask for a simple $65 arrangement, “just something to acknowledge the holiday,” she said. Others go big, requesting $200 to $400 bouquets, often for first Valentine’s Days together. At Midwood, arrangements above $150 are outselling lower-budget options this year.

Rising costs: The shift away from a rose-only bouquet might have something to do with the cost, she said. A dozen roses, once priced around $95, now run closer to $135, which is a part of a broader national trend.

According to a survey from the National Retail Federation, customers are expected to spend $29.1B this year on Valentine’s Day, which is up $1.6B from last year. About $3.1B of that is expected to be on flowers.

So why the jump? Much of it comes down to supply costs. Many flowers are grown in South America, and growers have increased wages by roughly 35%, Blanton said, a cost passed along to the supply chain. Add tariff surcharges — about 10% that started last Mother’s Day — and higher transportation costs, and florists are paying significantly more for the same stems. Those increases inevitably show up on price tags.

A tip from the pros: Order early. That means if you haven’t placed an order yet for your loved one, stop what you’re doing and call a florist right now. If you’re too late, consider a Lego bouquet you can build together, or a plush bouquet. It will never wilt, unlike your significant other’s stare if you show up to dinner empty-handed. —Lindsey Banks

A Bank of America employee was shot and killed Friday morning at a bank branch in northwest Charlotte where she worked.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police identified the victim as Ina Michelle Lang, age 50. Police said they were called at about 10:30 a.m. to the bank by the intersection of Brookshire Boulevard (N.C. 16) and Mount Holly-Huntersville Road and arrived to find Lang with an apparent gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Later Friday, police said they arrested Sam’on Andrew Smith, 22, and charged him with Lang’s murder. Smith is being held without bond. The only previous charges against him in the state’s court system are citations for carrying a concealed weapon and reckless driving.

Police have not released additional information about the circumstances of Friday’s shooting.

Lang’s husband told WSOC that she was a mother of five and had worked for Bank of America for nearly 20 years. He said he had no idea why she was shot but thinks she might have been on a smoke break behind the bank at the time of the shooting.

An online fundraising page for Lang’s family organized by a coworker said she “brought a motherly [aura] to our team and will always be remembered as someone that never missed an opportunity to give, and having a heart bigger than she knew what to do with.”

A Bank of America spokesperson said in a written statement: “We are deeply saddened by the loss of one of our Bank of America teammates. Our thoughts and condolences are with her family and friends.”—Tony Mecia

Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:

FRIDAY: “Senior Scholars Weekly Meeting: Charlotte at a Crossroads,” 10-11 a.m., at Providence United Methodist Church, 2810 Providence Rd. Join the members of Senior Scholars as Shannon Binns, Founder and Executive Director of Sustain Charlotte, named by WFAE as one of “the most powerful voices in Charlotte,” shares his vision of the good choices that will make Charlotte more equitable, more connected and more healthy. $5 for guests. $25 annual membership.

FEBRUARY 19: “South Charlotte Partners Breakfast Club,” 8-9:30 a.m., at AC Hotel Charlotte Ballantyne, 14819 Ballantyne Village Way. Join South Charlotte Partners for a discussion on its February SCP Breakfast Club topic “Public Safety Update.” The business community and residents alike will learn about the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s ongoing efforts to keep South Charlotte safe. CMPD Chief Estella Patterson will share remarks on her top priorities, and other members of CMPD will be present to answer questions. $28.52/ticket.

MARCH 7: “Michelle’s Mighty Mission 24,000 Meter Row,” 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Sugar Creek Brewing Company, 215 Southside Dr. Join Sugar Creek Brewing Company, CrossFit Mecklenburg and 24 Foundation to pull together for the cancer community at the Seventh Annual Michelle’s Mighty Mission 24,000 Meter Row. Be part of a high-energy day of fitness, fun and something truly mighty. All are welcome; participants must be age eight or older. $50/person.

MARCH 26: “Learning Society: AI and the Future of Everything,” 7-8:15 p.m., at Queens University of Charlotte, 1900 Selwyn Ave. AI and robotics aren’t just transforming industries—they’re redefining humanity. Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and former Wired editor, and Nita Farahany, author of The Battle for Your Brain, offer an insider look at AI’s rise, ethics, and what it will take to thrive in a future of new rules and values. $45-$75.

➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.