MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — It’s been nearly two years since Ashley Valentine helped found and open Rooted MKE — a children’s bookstore on Vliet Street that features BIPOC authors. 

Since then, she’s built up the space to be a “dream oasis” for Milwaukee’s Black and brown youth, offering one-on-one and small group academic support and coaching while also selling books featuring characters of color.

Valentine, a former public school teacher, said she’s always had the desire to support our future generations. 

“School can be a traumatizing place for some kids and for their families, so just offering parents and families another way to access literacy in a space they helped to curate, hopefully it feels safe and welcoming and inviting,” Valentine told CBS 58’s Ellie Nakamoto-White. “Just providing another opportunity for people to be in community and access Black and brown literacy; not as an afterthought, but just the focus of what we do every day.”

Valentine said customers of all ages can get emotional when they see the books offered on her shelves.

“They’re always excited to see brown kids on covers of books because they don’t see that all the time, and parents get emotional [because] that is not something that they had the opportunity to experience when they were growing up,” Valentine said.

She added that she gets people in her store from not only the Milwaukee area, but from the entire Midwest.

And it was on Sunday, March 3, that Valentine got the most surprising customer yet.

“We saw police roaming the area and just assumed maybe there was an emergency somewhere,” Valentine recalled. “Then one of the Secret Service agents came in.”

Valentine said agents began quickly combing through the store and checking out their electronic devices.

“It was scary!” Valentine said, as she and her staff were unsure what was going on.

But then about 20 minutes later, Dr. Jill Biden stepped through the doors.

“What am I doing to even be on the First Lady’s radar?” Valentine asked. “How did I get here?”

Valentine said Biden, who was in town as part of a three-day campaign tour in battleground states, was in the store for about 30 minutes, meeting other shoppers and perusing inventory before she eventually purchased a thank you card and some books.

“It’s just a reassurance that we are doing something that’s important and we are valuable, and even on days where we feel like we don’t know when we’re going to get the next sale, someone is always watching,” Valentine said.