Mermaid, punk, giver: Silver Sea owner embodies Fourth Ave.

Lizzie Mead got her jewelry-making start using telephone wire to design bracelets and rings for her classmates.

“In elementary school, I was following around the telephone guys and getting multicolored wire from them,” says Mead, who now owns Silver Sea Jewelry, 330 N. Fourth Ave. “I would wait for them to drop (wire), and I would be like, ‘Can I have this?’”

Mead, a Tucson native, began working for Silver Sea when the business was a mall kiosk.

The name captivated Mead, a lover of the ocean, and when the original owner sold the multi-cart business that stretched to locales such as Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, Mead started making payments.

That was 1993. It would be years before she would find her home on Fourth Avenue, where she could string together interests as diverse as jewelry-making, animal activism and cosplay, or costumed roleplaying.

“You can tie it all together in this one little space,” Mead, 41, says of the store, which, with its teal walls, weathered fixtures and mermaid in the front window, looks like a beachside transplant.

A group of friends gave the place a makeover about one year ago, says Michelle Caillet, a friend of Mead’s and member of the animal charity fundraising group Beading Divas to the Rescue.

“We took her keys away and kicked her out and stripped her store down to bare bones,” Caillet says. “She is always giving to everyone else ... and she has such a neat store, we really wanted to help her feel like the sea.”

Between opening the current space and her kiosk days in the Tucson and Foothills malls, Mead spent about five years on Congress Street. She moved into the 435-square-foot store on Fourth Avenue about seven years ago.

“She is exactly who belongs on Fourth Avenue,” Caillet says.

As part of the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association, Mead also plans events for the district, such as Return of the Mermaids on Saturday, Aug. 8. For the second year, Mead’s love of the ocean will extend beyond the shores of her store to bring sea life to Fourth Avenue and downtown. Mead is an original organizer of the event which began last year.

For fun, Mead loves to dress up, whether as a mermaid or with organizations such as the Tucson Steampunk Society. She also sings and plays keyboard for what she calls an “indie-cover-nerd band” by the name of Will There Be Cake?

“I have so many interests that I do a little bit here, and a little bit there,” she says. That variety can mean a work week of up to 80 hours.

But at Silver Sea, all parts of her world come together. Here’s how.

1. She can play dress up.

Mead traces her love of costumes back to an internship she had with a jeweler at the Arizona Renaissance Festival as a 16-year-old. She spent 20 years in the Society for Creative Anachronism.

In school, Mead studied theater, moving briefly to Manhattan to do so. Even while running her business, she worked for years as a makeup artist for Borderlands Theater.

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These days, her ties to cosplay and steampunk communities mean her wardrobe has variety beyond Renaissance attire.

“The different dress-up communities come here to get accessories for their outfits, so they will bring their costumes and be like, ‘What should I wear with this?’” Mead says. She jumps into action, scouring inventory. “Maybe a shell necklace and big sea star earrings and hair clips.”

And if she doesn’t have it, she can probably make it, says Jocelynne Weathers, a friend, Tucson Steampunk Society board member and the owner of Lady in Waiting Fashions. Mead makes 20 to 25 percent of the store’s jewelry.

2. She can bring her dogs to work.

Mead blames her mom, whom she calls “the crazy cat lady,” for her passion for animals.

“I’d always been into cats until I had my first dog, and then it was dogs, dogs, dogs,” Mead says.

Lace, a rescued white greyhound with a seizure disorder, was her first dog. Found in a dumpster, Lace taught her owner about owning a pup. Mead never looked back.

Sometimes, she will bring one of her two greyhounds, Opal or Bird, or a foster animal to work with her, and she continues to volunteer with a variety of animal rescues. She estimates that on her own she finds a home for 8 to 12 animals each year.

3. She can give back.

In 2008, a hit-and-run car crash critically injured Mead’s greyhounds, Opal and Rider, and left her with more than $14,000 in veterinary bills.

Enter Beading Divas to the Rescue, a group of fellow greyhound lovers who came together to raise money for Mead by making and selling bracelets for $20 each.

Six of the seven original divas still bead together, along with other volunteers, even though Mead’s vet bills were paid off. Now they have raised more than $100,000 for a variety of local and national animal charities.

Mead sells the bracelets at her store, organizes bracelet-making workshops for groups and occasionally sets up a table in-store to allow passersby to get crafty.

Her outreach starts inside her shop. She keeps a pet pantry stocked with food, leashes, collars and toys — whatever is on sale or donated. Every month she gives out 200 to 300 pounds of pet food, mostly to individuals on social security or homeless teens with pets, who she also tries to connect with local resources.

“She sees the small problems, the on-the-ground problems and says, ‘What can I do? How can I be involved? How can I help the teens who are homeless on my business street or the people who can’t feed their pets or this lost animal?’” Weathers says. “She has always been about how she can help.”

And if she can don a period-costume or mermaid attire in the process, all the better.