A woman descended on the Crescent Department store escalator in the early 1960s. Her stiletto heel got stuck in the mechanism at the very bottom.

“She stepped out of her shoe, and she was so shy, she just kept walking,” said “The Strange Beautiful” author Carla Crujido. “And my dad, who had been watching her come down the escalator, she caught his eye. He grabbed her shoe and put it back on her foot. So, it was a very Cinderella moment.”

This is the story of how Carla Crujido’s parents met. This story drew “The Strange Beautiful” author to the building, compelling her to search for more of its stories. But, she was quickly met with dead ends. For a building with such a prominent space in downtown Spokane, Crujido was able to find surprisingly little.

“When I got into the archives at (th

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