Last Friday, Rodney Kwock looked around the pink store and tried to sum it all up. "There's been so much crying in here, I'm surprised the carpet doesn't squish when you walk," he said. Everyone nodded and laughed.

A Pink Promise store at Ward Warehouse was open for just one month as a way to promote Sunday's Susan G. Komen race. A month was all organizers planned for, but in the last week, customers and volunteers were saying, "I can't believe this won't be here anymore."

"The store took on its own life," Kwock said. "People came in and they just didn't want to leave. They would come to hang out."

The idea was to stock an entire store with pink merchandise, both items from the Komen Foundation catalog and donated items from local merchants. The store was run solely by volunteers. So many people wanted to help, organizers actually had to turn people away.

Volunteer Sheryl Chun's mother battled breast cancer for six years. Chun marked the one-year anniversary of her mother's death at A Pink Promise.

"This store has been so therapeutic for me," she said. "It's like somebody cares here. There are people who come all the time."

Audrey Kitchell, a student at the University of Hawai'i College of Education, was at the store every chance she could get. Her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother all had breast cancer.

"And where I grew up in California, our house is in a cul de sac. Three of my neighbors have had it," Kitchell said. "That's why I'm obsessed with anything for breast cancer awareness. I'm here almost every day."

Things like pink socks, pink teddy bears and wrist bands sold well. The hottest item was a T-shirt specially designed for the store by local company Buti-Groove, with a pink ribbon worked into their popular Hi Life design. Buti-Groove donated hundreds of shirts, which sold out.

Kwock estimates the store made $20,000 in their one month of business. Not bad for a little retail boutique tucked away at the top of an escalator. But more than that, the store made connections.

Customers came from all over; tourists who read about the store online, people on business in Honolulu from the Neighbor Islands. A large contingent from Hilo flew in just to shop at the pink store.

There was lots of crying, but some of it was happy crying. Or grateful crying. Or somebody-cracking-you up crying.

On Friday night, volunteers packed up what remained of the merchandise. A pink maneki neko stood, paw raised, by the cash register.

"People are already talking about next year and I'm saying can we finish this year first?"