When Vamarr Hunter first walked into Give Me Some Sugah bakery in South Shore 14 years ago, he immediately felt at home.
The walls showcased local art, R&B music was playing, and the tablecloths were made of leather. It was how he would decorate his own place, he said.
“It was the energy, it was the decor. Everything just felt natural,” he said.
Hunter, who had recently moved into the neighborhood, would come in with his then-fiancee, Meagan, and enjoy his favorite treats, like key lime bars, chocolate chip cookies and especially the pancakes.
The owner, Lenore Lindsey, would come up and tell them, in a motherly way, that they were eating too much. That didn’t stop them.
Little did Lindsey and Hunter know that there was something to their easy rapport — Hunter is the son she gave up for adoption at age 17. It wasn’t until a few years ago that they discovered their connection. Now, mother and son work together, with Hunter recently taking over the business his mom built.
‘A place that the neighborhood built’
Lindsey, 67, never dreamed of running a bakery, let alone passing it on to her long-lost son. Her cooking journey began after she met her future husband in 1990. He began running a “church” of sorts out of her South Shore bungalow, leading Bible study and youth choir for folks in the community.
“I started baking and cooking because the kids were over on Saturday and they needed lunch,” Lindsey said. Using her mother’s old recipes, she would then bring treats to work, where her appreciative co-workers would tell her she should open her own bakery.
That planted the seed. In 2008, after she’d retired from her job as an accountant, she opened the doors to Give Me Some Sugah.
“I just wanted to have a nice little neighborhood place where people didn’t have to be served through bulletproof glass and they could be treated like people,” Lindsey said.
Over the years, she built a community staple in the cozy storefront at 2234 E. 71st St. Customers come into the sunny space and sit at tables by the window to enjoy their cookies and pie. Some bring in childhood items like cookie jars, which Lindsey has displayed on a shelf.
During what Lindsey called the tough years, “I had a few families that kind of kept me hoisted up. They would come in and just buy tons of [food] that they weren’t going to eat and gift cards that they never used … because they wanted [me] to succeed,” she said.
Then her specialty, the potato chip cookie, became a hit a few years ago, helping boost the business to profitability.
“It really is a place that the neighborhood built, because I had five recipes,” she said. “They said, ‘Girl, you gotta bake some sweet potato pie.’ And so I had to learn how to bake all those things as I went along.”
A unique case
As mom was finding success, her son was wondering where he came from.
Hunter, 50, always felt like he had been adopted. It wasn’t until he was 35 that his adoptive mother, with whom he had a fraught relationship, confirmed what he’d suspected. He still had a feeling that the circumstances around his adoption were strange, so after seeing the phone number for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children come up on TV in early 2022, he decided to call the hotline.
The organization’s special programs coordinator put him in touch with Gabriella Vargas, a California-based genetic genealogist who was working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at the time. Hunter had already done his genetic profile through a genealogy website, but needed help connecting the dots. It wasn’t long until Vargas tracked down his biological mom.
Lindsey received Hunter’s contact information and gave him a call not long after. Hunter saw that Give Me Some Sugah came up on his caller ID.
He picked up the phone. “Miss Lenore? From Give Me Some Sugah? It’s Vamarr!”
Lindsey drew a blank.
“It’s Vamarr, you know, Meagan and Vamarr!” he said, referencing his former fiancee.
That’s when it clicked. Mother and son had been living in the same neighborhood all this time, just a mile away from each other.
“I just remember going, ‘This is insane,” said Vargas, who has cracked cold cases like an unsolved 1987 murder with “a gnat’s eyebrow of DNA. I’ve never had a case turn out like this.”
‘A pillar of this community’
At the time Lindsey and Hunter found each other, she was in the midst of battling breast cancer. She thought about shutting down after having a stroke the morning before her last chemo treatment in June 2022, not long after they were reunited. Hunter wanted to help his mom keep the business going, so when he wasn’t working as a customer service rep at transportation and logistics company C.H. Robinson, he spent his off hours learning how to bake.
“As she kept trying to come back, after about a week or so, she was back in the hospital again,” Hunter said. “And I felt that she was trying to do too much, so I just wanted to try to get in and help where I could.”
He knew he wanted to be there for her, even though he’d never baked before.
“I don’t know if I baked a roll of Pillsbury dough,” Hunter said.
He left his full-time job in April to take over the bakery.
Lindsey is now cancer-free. Tears filled the corners of her eyes as she recalled connecting with Hunter.
“He really is such a good soul. He has just no animosity [about being given up for adoption]. I’m sure he’s adding years to my life because I just got this sense of peace. It’s like your life came full circle,” said Lindsey, whose cellphone wallpaper is a photo of Hunter and her daughter, Rachel.
Lindsey has mostly stepped away from the day-to-day at Give Me Some Sugah. Hunter plans to keep his mom’s business in the neighborhood and to build on her success. (One thing on the to-do list? Bring back those pancakes.) While she had been dealing with her health issues, the bakery was open on limited days. Hunter said business is picking up now that he’s opened the bakery five days a week.
He feels blessed to have found Lindsey. And he’s expanding his baking skill set. His specialty is pound cake.
“It could have been somebody I wish I’d have never found, you know, but she has been a pillar of this community,” Hunter said. “I’ve been given an opportunity to take over something that is well established already, and I want to maintain as much of it as I can.”