VANDERBIJLPARK. – Sandra Photiou, co-business owner of one of Vanderbijlpark’s oldest corner stores in Helena Lochner Street is well-known for her friendly smile and good heart.

She was born in Namibia, but her parents moved to South Africa when she was just a few months old. “We moved around a lot, but eventually we settled in Vanderbijlpark,” Sandra says.

Born and raised in a Portuguese family she attended Oliver Lodge Primary School before matriculating at Vaal High School. Her husband is Greek which makes for an interesting mix in the Photiou household.

“Our son loves everything Portuguese, but our daughter (6) only wants to speak Greek although she understands Portuguese very well.”

At one point she wanted to study to become a teacher and worked towards saving for her studies. Working hard has always been part of her personality.

“My mom used to do catering and over weekends I would help her to bake cookies. I started to work after school at a very young age, at one time I used to work in a bottle store,” she remembers.

After matric, she worked at Fochini and had enough money saved within a year to commence her studies. “By that time I decided I really need a car more, so I bought a car and start saving again.”

Then she married her high school sweetheart, Nick, left Fochini and joined the family business. The corner store at that stage belonged to Nick’s parents, but the couple bought the shop in 2007.

After their son, Andrea, was born Sandra had a surge of creativity and started to bake cakes for family and friends. The cakes were so popular that she soon commenced baking cakes for the shop as well.

“At that point the TV programme, Cake Boss was a huge hit, and people would come in and ask me to bake and decorate the most outrages cakes,” she laughs.

The one bride-to-be asked for a wedding cake with a cage inside where they could release white doves. “My mom helped with that one. We made over 2000 sugar flowers for the cake, but we pulled it off.”

Her mom, Dina Laranja, is Sandra’s biggest role model and inspiration. “My mom grew up in Portugal. She started writing letters for my dad who was a soldier in Angola at that time.

He proposed in a letter and she left everything to join him in Angola. It was at the height of the war and at one point she had to flee to South-West Africa (Namibia) with only a bag of clothes, without knowing if my dad was still alive.

“My mom had a hard life, but she never complains. I got my love for cooking, baking, and dedication to serving from her,” Sandra says.

It was in her cake-baking phase that a professor from the TUT one day ordered three cakes for former president Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday.

The TUT donated one of the cakes to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Foundation. The next year around Madiba’s birthday she got a call from the Foundation asking for two cakes, one for the foundation and one for Madiba’s house.

Thus started the tradition and for the next few years she baked two cakes per year for Mr Mandela.

“I once even got to meet him. I had to deliver the cake to his home. Andrea and my mom were with me, and to our surprise, one of Madiba’s granddaughters was there and she took us to meet him.”

Sandra stopped baking cakes in 2017 when her daughter, Zoie was born. “Life just became too hectic and now I don’t bake to sell anymore.”

She found an outlet for her creativity in making beautiful mosaic crosses and Bible covers. “To be creative is my escape from life,” Sandra admits.

She is always busy and has now started to cook real winter comfort food for the shop too.

Recently she has embarked on a sock project at the store. “I’m putting up a container where people can donate new and whole second-hand socks. I’ve already got my mom and aunts to knit socks as well.”

Nick sighs: “You know, she always puts everybody in front of herself.” Sandra laughs it off, she clearly loves life and feels she has been put on this earth to serve.

“I love to make people happy and I strive to lighten everybody’s burden,” she says with sparkling eyes. She doesn’t mind helping, but she can’t tolerate laziness.

“You know I want my children to remember two things about me. First of all, I always managed to protect them, and secondly that I taught them to work hard because I work hard.”