An Odyssey of Spirit and Character(s) Amy Cooper Brings Her Vision to the Indescribable Summerland Experience

Handily sandwiched between this world and the next, we have the picturesque village of Summerland, California. This quaint California idyll derives its name from ‘The Summerland’ – a term Theosophists apply to the heavenly sphere that surrounds our yearning planet Earth. Summerland was indeed founded by Spiritualist H.L. Williams in 1883 as a colony for believers in a chatty hereafter – making Summerland yet another sun-drenched California surf town founded by séance enthusiasts. Sprinkled delicately across a couple square miles of oceanfront hillside, today Summerland looks downright sacred. Given its spiritual history, it shouldn’t surprise us that at the corner of Lillie and Greenwell in Summerland there exists a sanctuary called “The Sacred Space.”

Some 18 years ago, Jack and Rose Herschorn quit the restaurant business and hit the global road, heading out to parts theretofore unknown to them: Nepal, Thailand, Burma, Tibet, Bali, holy sites in the Middle East. The couple returned to the States with two 40’ ship containers full of large- and small-scale objets spirituels. These they eventually poured into and around a 19th century Summerland adobe they somewhat ostentatiously renamed The Sacred Space. The place – and the labyrinthine Balinese gardens the Herschorns lovingly designed around it – quickly became a popular, if not entirely describable, destination to parched souls and bedazzled shoppers. Then after nearly two more decades of travel and procurement, Jack and Rose felt it was page-turning time. Enter enlightened hurricane Amy Cooper. 

“Being outside in those gardens,” Cooper says, “having a cup of tea and being treated as a welcome guest was always a heartwarming experience. I started coming here 16 or 17 years ago and brought my daughter and family and friends many times.” Cooper now owns The Sacred Space: an intentional, spirit-lifting oasis right in the middle of a town founded around spirit – or spirits, as the case may be. The Sacred Space is a beautifully appointed, many-chambered nautilus of discovery around whose every corner wonder awaits. This is not hyperbolic hoo-ha. “One of my inspirations,” Cooper says, “is a quote from John Muir. ‘Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.’” 

The Sacred Space unerringly punches Muir’s ticket. An improbable profusion of gently lit rooms unfold as you walk through the place, evocatively showcasing sacred objects from around the world – along with crystals of all kinds, books, jewelry, and more – the air subtly charged with a calming suggestion of spice and flora from beyond the horizon. A demure little cash register crouches inconspicuously in the front room, but the place is a “shop” like the Taj Mahal is a roadside shrine. The Sacred Space’sholistic raison d’être is not ultimately transactional. Amy Cooper is after something else and has been for a while.

“I didn’t start Plum Goods to open a store,” she says, referring to her former State Street love affair. “I could have done that online. I created Plum Goods to offer an environment where people love to be, and where they could find gifts they loved to give.” For a decade, Cooper’s Plum Goods – a charming, uncategorizable cornucopia of the first order – flourished on the 900 block of State Street, being recognized (and awarded) as one of the best gift stores in Santa Barbara every year it was opened. 

In 2020, a globe-encircling runaway bronchial virus (if you can imagine) arrived to stop the world turning, and Cooper had to painfully shutter Plum Goods. When she learned that the longtime owners of The Sacred Space were divesting, she saw a literally marvelous opportunity; one approximately as daunting as a sherpa-free ascent of Everest. It helped that she deeply shared the founders’ inclinations; and that the stars otherwise aligned in the person of an open-hearted creative and believer in her vision; a Montecitan and polymath named Pete Muller.

“I met Amy Cooper at Plum Goods many years ago on Christmas Eve,” Muller says. “I loved the great energy and vibe at Plum Goods. It became a tradition for me to shop there on December 24 every year, and I always looked forward to our chats. Like so many others, I was completely bummed when Plum Goods went out of business during the pandemic.” Muller is that familiar modern emblem of success: a towering Quantitative Investment genius/Forbes fixation whose songs have lingered near the top of the Billboard charts with some regularity. Read that again if you have to. “I fortuitously re-met Amy through her involvement with Santa Barbara Records,” Muller says in a nod to Cooper’s own tireless multiverse. “We started brainstorming on different ways we could do something creative together. When the Sacred Space opportunity came up, Amy reached out to see if I wanted to invest in her assuming the business. I thought, ‘Who me? I don’t invest in retail’; and in fact, I had never even been out to the store. But on my first visit to The Sacred Space, I got it. I understood how important it was to the community, what Amy hoped to accomplish, and why Jack and Rose thought she would be the perfect person to inherit their baby. It felt a little like I was being called to help make it happen. Who knows, maybe I’ll start doing my Christmas Eve shopping there!”

The rest is herstory. Amy Cooper has taken the previous owners’ uniquely fulsome vision and married it to her own light-filled focus, bringing to The Sacred Space the warm, welcoming Plum Goods vibe with which the Central Coast once fell head over heels in love. “In a world where there is no shortage of problems,” Cooper says, “I’d like to offer one small ‘solution,’ even if that’s just an hour where someone feels like all will be well, or feels joy, or a sense of peace, or that they aren’t alone. And then they’re able to take a piece of that experience home with them and share it with others.” 

Workshops, special events, and concerts onsite augment the Sacred Space mission, the covered amphitheater an example of the “deep jungle palatial” design school. The environs are otherwise pleasantly disorienting. From the outside you’ll see a cozily entrancing little shopfront overgrown with a riot of foliage – a vaguely equatorial welcome of sun-blanched, ornately tooled wood panels and carved elephants, trunks eternally raised in greeting. Inside, the space opens up in a way that fleetingly calls your sanity into question. Spacious, fragrant rooms – sparkling with beautiful and authentic accoutrements of the spirit – meander around a series of improbable gardens alive with water music. There is something puzzlingly magical about The Sacred Space. 

And surely the best is yet to come. Cooper is one of those people whose word is not only their bond, but a harbinger of happy forward motion. She can see her evolving Sacred Space as plain as day. “We offer solace and delight to people from around the world, treasures you can’t find anywhere else, and you always leave feeling better than when you arrived,” she says. “This is where I love to be.”