There was a moment he could have walked away ... from all of it. Tanner Hunsaker is not just a local entrepreneur, however, but also a local son carved from the rocky hillsides of the high desert. Much like the copper mined all around him, his resilience was going to be tested many times over the next months as he, and many other Downtown business owners, faced what the mud and water left when the 2025 catastrophic floods receded in Globe and Miami.
When Hunsaker was cleared to reenter his shops — Western Reprographics and Topo Joes — last October, he knew he was looking at a complete loss. The only thing left standing were the walls, his family and friends, but somehow that was enough.
“All the machines and tools over 15 years of acquiring and paying off … Gone,” he said of his Western Reprographics business. “Nothing was holding us here.
“I remember thinking, ‘Well, that happened. What’s next?” he said. “We could leave. My daughter had graduated, and there was nothing left of my business to salvage.”
He and his family didn’t leave, though. His newly renovated buildings, still in the flood zone of Downtown Globe, and the regular whoosh of doors opening and closing as customers come and go while the shop dogs look on, are a testament to that.
Hunsaker believes that people who live in the Globe area are made of tougher material than people from other areas. They have to be.
“From the conception of the mining camp to today, if you want to be here, you have to fight to be here,” he said.
Even as he stood gazing at all that was lost last year, that same community, family and sense of history was already rallying to give him a reason to stay.
“Everyone helped in every way possible,” he said. “This time.”
While he was realistic about the potential of future flooding and the possibility that help wouldn’t be coming if there was a next time, “we were the ones who decided to rebuild in a flood zone.”
The encouragement of his fellow business owners and friends was the first reason he chose to rebuild instead of move. Hunsaker said a great deal of thanks was also due to the financial assistance. Many people joined forces to help clean up the large, historic shops at 461-465 North Broad Street.
Even with every available loan and source of assistance, reinvesting took his family “to the very edge.”
Looking at other available properties in the Globe-Miami area gave Hunsaker the second reason to rebuild. “Everywhere I looked was in as bad or worse shape, or it just wouldn’t work for our purpose,” he said.
Hunsaker has a habit of sticking.
When he was still in high school in 1996, he started Quick Draw Signs with his mother, Leora. That was about the time that sign-making was making its initial forays into digitalization. He had been accepted at DeVry University and was preparing to leave when she asked him to help establish her business, train his replacement and then head out to college.
He agreed, except he never got around to the leaving part. “I started making a lot of friends and really enjoying the business life,” he said.
Hunsaker sold the business 11 years later and went to work for a marketing company that had a marketing company with the Apache Gold Casino. “I learned a great deal from them.”
Although he had the opportunity to move on with that company, he stayed in Globe and eventually opened the company that exists today. He operated first from behind his home and then from the old Gundry’s Texaco service station across from Nurdberger. His friend, radio personality Bill Taylor, suggested the location and helped him secure it.
Then the building he occupies today came up for sale. Only after purchasing it did he find out that he had come full circle.
The Oddonettos used it for many years as a furniture warehouse — John’s Furniture — but back in the 1960s, it had belonged to Hunsaker’s grandparents and was a Big A Auto Parts store. His father ran a machine shop next door after he returned from the Army, and when his aunt graduated, Hunsaker’s grandfather renovated the space where Topo Joe’s is today into a beauty shop.
In the ‘50s, the building was the Carrow Motor Co. GMC dealership. Flooding ended that business permanently, but the watermark from that earlier flood would be discovered more than 70 years later when Globe flooded again.
Hunsaker remembers standing in the mud inside Topo Joes last year and staring at the line where the 2025 floodwater reached when someone asked what the “other line was from.”
Everyone’s eyes traveled further up the wall … about 18 inches higher, where the watermark from the 1950s flooding could still be clearly seen. Whoever had renovated then had simply covered the damage with some sort of material and moved on.
“So, we know that the flood was worse,” he said.
He is pragmatic about the chances of another flood in the area and generally optimistic about Downtown businesses surviving the next time around.
“People say it (flooding) won’t happen for another 100 years,” he said. “In the ‘50s there was a burn and then a flood. It could happen again in another two years.”
The solution? Keep the drainages clear. Not just now, when the memory of the flooding is fresh, but at all times.
Hunsaker was greatly influenced by his uncle, Kip Culver, who passed away in 2015, but managed to leave behind a strong legacy of excellence and love of history and community during his short life.
After Culver’s death, Hunsaker stepped into leadership roles on the Downtown Association and the Center for the Arts boards. He remembers his uncle telling people how special Globe was.
“He would say they just didn’t know what they had here,” he said. “He was right. Globe is the quiet life hidden in its shell.”
Meanwhile, Hunsaker and his family have reinvested and grown their business. Topo Joes is back to selling mountain bikes, biking apparel and accessories, and coffee. It also repairs and rents out UTVs and mountain bikes.
Local mom Debbie Yerkovich related a story about her youngest son dropping broad hints to her about going to Topo Joes to rent mountain bikes. He had visited several days in a row and wanted his mom to rent a couple of mountain bikes for him and his friend and drop them off at the top of the Pinals.
“Tanner treated them with so much respect: Two junior high kids!” she said.
He suited them up and gave them a tutorial on shifting and all of the safety features. He made them feel like they had been doing it their whole lives. He even gave them a clip-on Topo Joes water bottle, which they had to immediately go to Connie's and fill up with Powerade.
“I appreciated that Tanner was responsible for creating core memories for our kids,” she said. “Not just kids. Adults too.”
“Having Topo Joes has given that age group something the junior high age group doesn’t currently have in Globe,” she said.
Yerkovich said Hunsaker has a diverse group of people around him who make downtown Globe a wonderful place to visit.
“His whole crew is so great,” she said. “Officer Moya was a bike cop, and she works there at the shop.”
RoseAnne Moya was one of the first female police officers in Globe, Yerkovich said, and she now works at Topo Joes. Visit topojoes.com to find out more.
Western Repro, also known as Western Reprographics Signs, is still Hunsaker’s primary business and offers custom signage, banners, advertising and graphics, as well as specialty apparel. It is celebrating its 16th year in business. Call 928-425-0772 for more information.
Customers can continue to expect a high level of service, but Hunsaker has made his company even more diverse while divesting it of some less profitable practices. “We have to keep growing,” he said. “We have improved. There are some services we will be adding, and some we will back away from.”
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