Over a century ago Sears became a household name by selling and delivering everything from clothing to homes directly to customers through its famous catalogs.

“Catalog, Sears and Roebuck, I used to look at my mother’s Sears and Roebuck, yeah,” says Daisy Gandolfi from Cathedral City who says she’s a loyal Sears shopper for years.

Now the company is just trying to survive in part because of the internet’s version of their original business model.

“You mean history repeats itself, yeah, I know that but I don’t like buying things online I want to see what I have, that’s like getting a boyfriend online, no, I want to see that person,” says Gandolfi.

Stores have been closing since the store filed for bankruptcy in October and another 80 are expected to close.

I don’t understand how they let it run into the ground, I‘m also from Santa Cruz, California and I was one of their first customers in ’77 and they just closed their doors I think it was in November,” she says.

The stores’ future depends on a buyer and bid of over 4 billion dollars. One that did come in late Friday, from the company’s Chairman Edward Lampert.

John Mosser, who only buys his tools there got nostalgic at the thought of Sears disappearing for good, “As a kid growing up my parents would come and we’d always go to sears with them they used to have a snack bar and we would sit and get some popcorn and sit and watched the new color T.V.’s while the parents shopped, they got rid of the snack bar a long time ago but yeah it would be a tragedy to see them go.”

And Sears wouldn’t be the only store to go if the deal doesn’t go through, Kmart stores would close too. That’s almost 70 thousand jobs gone.

“We’re losing a lot of these stores little by little Kmart and Sears being two of them and its’ very unfortunate because when you look at the economy and stuff we really need these jobs,” says Larry DaSilva.

Gandolfi says she hopes the deal goes through because she can’t imagine all of the kind salespeople she deals with being out of jobs, and products and services she loves disappearing, “That’s sad, that is really sad, we need Sears.”

Locals React to Sears’ Uncertain Future