A couple of years ago,  the owners of Island Books, Roger and Nancy Page, started to plan ahead to their retirement and the eventual sale of their business. It was not just a buyer they were looking for. No. They were looking for someone who would ensure that the special relationship between the book shop and the community would endure.

Roger Page knows well the responsibility he carries as the owner of the shop. He remembers a young woman who came into the store a few years ago. She lingered at the counter to say how special the shop was to her personally.

“I was brought up in this store,” she said.

She told Roger Page, “You can never, ever sell this place.”

It is a familiar refrain.

When Islanders describe Island Books they use words like treasure, community asset, beloved, unique, special. In the parlance of a tight-knit, small town, the shop is simply irreplaceable.

It is more than a bookstore. It is a touchstone, a community gathering place where children know there is a special place for them in the back.

Many Islanders have been customers since childhood. Adults shop for cards or gifts and pick up the latest book club offering. It is a place where shoppers run into neighbors and friends or come for a reading of a new book in the evening.

So it was fitting that a new owner for the shop was found right inside the store.

The Pages, recently named Mercer Island’s 2015 Citizens of the Year, were adamant about the kind of person who would be best for the shop. It could not be someone who just “liked to read.”

“We had to find a business-minded person who knew and understood the community,” he said.

They could only hope that it would be an Islander to take it on.

The Pages had already gotten the shop ready to sell. They wanted to ensure that the future of store was secure with a new lease.

Next, the shop had to be profitable. And it has been.

Roger Page notes that after a few tough years with the advent of ebooks and Amazon, the shop has done very well.

“The last three years have been the best ever,” he said.

After all of the preparation, it was a series of increasingly serious conversation at the shop that led to its sale to Laurie Raisys, an Island resident. The sale became final on July 1. Roger and Nancy Page will remain working at the store.

The combination of her community connections and professional background made Raisys a good fit. But Roger Page noted that her background living in several places over the years that strengthened her appeal.

She agreed. “You had to learn to adapt, find new friends. It is up to you to make your way in a new community.”

Apparently Raisys was good at it from the beginning.

“My brothers would say ‘you go knock on the door,’ when we wanted to see if there were kids our age in a new neighborhood,” she said.

Raisys, 49, was born into a military family that moved often to postings both in the U.S, and around the world. Those places included Japan, Spain, California and North Carolina. She said she began working at age 13 — she had paper routes, and stints at Baskin and Robbins and in retail.

She began college at California Lutheran University and finished in 1989 at Pacific Lutheran University with a major in Public Relations/ Communications. She held an internship at The Rockey Company in Seattle and was later an event director at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. She moved on to Microsoft and worked in college recruiting there for nine years. She later returned to be a consultant in the games division.

She met her husband Victor Raisys there, an Island resident and a Mercer Island High School graduate. It was her future mother-in law took her to Island Books.

“I have shopped here ever since,” she said.

The couple married in 1996 at St. Monica Church. They moved to the Island in 2005 and have four children aged 18, 16, 13 and 11 who have attended Island schools.

It is those connections and her presence over the years at the shop, that brought her to a series of conversations with Roger Page that led to the sale.

Raisys will inherit an experienced staff. There are 10 employees — all who have worked at the shop for years. They are well known to Island Books shoppers. Most worked with other booksellers before coming to the Island, Page said.

The new owner has been working at the store since April. She notes that it is not for the faint of heart.

“In all the years I worked at Microsoft,” she said. “I have never worked so hard. There is so much to do — all the time.”

The Pages feel that they have found just the right champion for Island Books and the community; closing their chapter and opening another.