As the daughter of a struggling single mom, Chantel Waterbury had to fight for her education.
“My mom was a creative woman but struggled to hold a job due to health-related issues,” Waterbury, now 40, tells PEOPLE. “We were on and off welfare my entire childhood.” Still, she found herself in private school since her older half-brothers (whose father was wealthier) attended.
Eventually, it became clear to the school that Waterbury’s mother couldn’t pay her way. “I started to realize that there were things – good grades, good deeds – that could keep you in school,” she says. She started cleaning classrooms and tutoring younger children to pay her tuition.
When she received a scholarship to a prestigious high school four hours away from her childhood home, she knew she had to find a way
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Cookie Lee Transforms Into ViVi
by Ramya Chandrasekaran • • 0 Comments
In a showroom in a Tustin business complex recently, women bustled around, looking at rings, earrings, bracelets and other fashion accessories.
Debbie Millar — clad in leather leggings and a crimson-colored top, and radiating with a crystal and gold necklace and wrist cuff — walked over to a collection featuring pearls and picked up one of the jewelry line’s latest creations.
“This is one my favorites,” Millar said.
Millar, a wife and mother of six children ranging in age from 16 to 22, is the new owner of ViVi, an accessories — primarily jewelry — company formally known as Cookie Lee.
She bought the company last year when her friend, Lee, the founder and namesake, decided to end her 23-year reign over one of the most successful home-grown success stories in Orange County.
At ViVi, stay-at-home moms