“Well, the attorney can get it done. Is that a problem?” Owens asked the bank. It turned out it wasn’t.

At 9 a.m. on August 1, 1994, Owens and Cluff closed the sale and Cluff handed him the keys.

It’s a fantastic illustration of the reason why Owens was drawn to owning his own business. “When you work for a large corporation, the pros are it’s got benefits, it’s a steady paycheck, there’s lots of room to expand and grow, but you can’t really make your own decisions in how you share your time, talent, and treasure, basically.”

Owens’ interest in buying the Anchorage Tastee Freez was grounded in his dedication to making sure his business would be able to provide jobs to young people and support his community, which he’s done now for nearly thirty years.

He attributes his community-forward attitude to his upbringing. “There are three boys in my family—I’m the middle—but all three of us are basically the same as far as community service and philanthropy, our view of how we treat people, and how we share what we have. Which is kind of neat, because my parents never really sat us down and talked to us about it, we just observed the way they led their lives—philanthropy, community service, and treating people right, that was something that they did every day. It wasn’t the exception, it was the rule.”

Owens grew up in Montana working in the drug store his parents operated together for forty years; his father was the pharmacist, and his mother managed operations and hiring. In addition to their children, Owens’ parents routinely hired other high schoolers, providing an example of engaging young people in the workplace that Owens has followed ever since.

In high school and college, Owens ran a catering business: “I was employing high school kids… so I made a deal with the HomeEc teacher at the high school, Mrs. Nason, that if these kids were working for me (and they were getting paid) they were learning quantity food prep, how to set tables for banquets, how to do food service on a buffet line—so those kids were also getting high school credit.”

After college, the catering was a side business; at the same time Owens was also working for an agricultural industrial supplier and was responsible for hiring for the yard, and he routinely selected youth and young adults for positions loading vehicles or stocking shelves.

“From the time I was in high school, I’ve been hiring high school kids and college kids,” Owens says, and having a business in which he could make opportunities for young people to work was a significant motivator in his move to purchase Tastee Freez.

He sees these opportunities as especially important since basic financial concepts often aren’t taught in schools. “Schools make very little time for [financial literacy]. There used to be more: a class on common sense finance like saving accounts, how to balance a checkbook, retirement, what Social Security really is. It’s meant to be like 40 percent of your retirement, not all of it, and most of these kids that I’m working with now, if you ask them what Social Security is for, they think it’s so that when they get done working they’re just getting paid to retire and sit at home.”

Beyond making opportunities for young people, Owens looks for ways to build his entire community. “There’s so many good things that happen in the community that need support, and it’s not always monetary,” he says. As an example, Tastee Freez was instrumental in turning what was a “mud hole,” according to Owens, into a municipal Adopt-a-Park on the corner of Jewel Lake and Raspberry.

Years ago he worked with several associates to purchase a youth camp in Wasilla so it could remain open.

And for thirty years Owens has been on the board of Wish Upon the North Star, a nonprofit that grants wishes to children much like the Make-A-Wish Foundation, though on a smaller, local scale.

He says he likes to “lead from the sidelines.”

“You can have a positive effect on a lot of different organizations just donating meals and banana split parties,” he says. “We’re a small business and so we can’t do the things that big corporations do because we don’t have the assets and we don’t have the personnel, but we can do lots of small things that get people headed in the right direction.”

Owens focuses on reaching out to the community, and he’s quick to point out that the community supports him and his business in return. “What’s kept Tastee Freez going through the coronavirus is the people in town, our neighbors, and our normal customers who have been very good in helping make sure that we have enough business coming in the door… when you take care of people on a regular basis, when you need help they’re going to do what they can to give assistance.”

And this isn’t the first time. In 2011, when the 176th Wing of the Alaska Air National Guard moved from then-Kulis Air National Guard Base at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, it was a huge blow for Tastee Freez. “The guard base was 15 to 20 percent of our business. They were there on a Friday and they were gone on Monday,” Owens recalls.

“That’s where you hope you’ve treated people right and they’re going to come and support you, and that’s what we’ve seen,” he says.

His customers also support each other. Some may remember about ten years ago when someone stole a donation jar set out on the Tastee Freez counter that was collecting funds to support National Guard Family programs. Owens guesses it had a few hundred dollars in it at the time.

Word spread quickly. Channel 2 aired a story about the theft that night, hours after it took place, and ran the news again the next day, when it was picked up by Anchorage Daily News. “Our customers were so upset that within two days there was a couple grand in the donation jar,” Owens says. “People were coming in and writing checks or donating $50 bills. And the guy got caught—his friend turned him in,” Owens laughs.

“There are things like that that reinforce how you think about people; there’s a lot more good people out there than there are bad people,” he says.

For Owens, how he’s been able to help others is his greatest accomplishment. He estimates that he’s provided jobs to more than 600 young adults while he’s owned Tastee Freez. “[Having] that impact on a large number of young people is probably the most important thing to me,” he says.

Over the years, as his employees have grown up and started their own families, many have remained in the area and their children or grandchildren have also worked at the restaurant. “To have three generations of the same family work for me at one time or another has been really rewarding, because if you didn’t treat them right, they wouldn’t send their kids or grandkids to you,” he says. “I think that’s what my parents would be most proud about.”