Family-owned Westwood jewelry business spans generations

Plush maroon carpets and gleaming glass cases filled with necklaces and earrings of silver and gold fill the intimate front room of Sarah Leonard Fine Jewelers on Westwood Boulevard.

Sarah “Sunny” Friedman and her husband Leonard, or “Lenny,” smile side by side in a photograph that looks over the family business from the top of a doorpost in the back of the room.

Tucked behind a case displaying UCLA-branded watches sits the coffee maker, with two bottles of wine peeking out from behind the sugars and stirrers – something to help customers celebrate after making a big purchase.

“We get to share in all these amazing moments with people – whether they’re newly in love, celebrating an anniversary or just treating themselves,” the store’s manager Dean Abell said from behind one of the jewelry cases.

Abell, a UCLA alumnus, is the third generation of his family to work in the jewelry store, which has been in Westwood for almost seven decades. The store will celebrate its 67th anniversary in November, said Gail Friedman, Abell’s aunt and an employee at the store.

Sarah and Leonard Friedman started the business, originally called Crescent Jewelers, on Kinross Avenue in 1946.

About 15 years after opening, they moved their store to Westwood Boulevard so they could expand their space to accommodate their growing business, said Gail Friedman, Sarah and Leonard Friedman’s daughter-in-law.

Today, Abell, his mother, father, aunt and uncle continue to work in the family business, a place where many of the family members have worked since they were children.

David Friedman, Sarah and Leonard Friedman’s son, started working in the store when he was 8 years old.

“Forty-seven years ago, I got 25 cents a day for cleaning toilets. Later, I got 50 cents for cleaning showcase tops, and now I’ve graduated to taking out the trash – and owning the place,” Friedman said, laughing.

David Friedman, who met his wife Gail at UCLA, said the store was not always successful. In its early days on Kinross Avenue, he said his parents sold inexpensive jewelry and never borrowed money. Other business owners doubted their ability to be successful, he said.

“When (my parents) opened the store in the ’40s, everyone thought they would go out of business. Of course, none of (those people) are here anymore,” he said.

Abell began working in the store part-time when he was a second-year at UCLA, but many clients have known him since he was a baby. He said some of his favorite customers are fourth-generation clients whose great-grandparents bought jewelry from his grandparents’ store.

“It’s an amazing cycle,” he said.

Abell said his grandparents taught him everything about how to run a jewelry business, and their relationship with each other was most inspiring to him. His grandmother, Sarah Friedman, died earlier this month at 91 years old.

“They had a classic romance,” he said. “I learned how to love from them more than anything else.”

Along with his grandparents’ inspiration, Abell said he has also been inspired by his clients’ stories about love for their own grandparents.

Five years after 9/11, his client received a call from officials saying they had found her safe box in the rubble at Ground Zero. When she opened the box, she found two diamonds that had been from gold rings from her grandmothers on both sides of her family, but the gold had melted away.

He said after hearing her tearful story, he was able to help her design a new ring in the shape of an infinity sign.

“Jewelry carries a story with it from generation to generation, and becomes only more valuable with age,” he said. “Nothing else can do that.”