Artist Cindi Sans with a couple of her Clarkston Rocks. Photo by Phil Custodio

BY PHIL CUSTODIO
Clarkston News Editor
Smooth stones with painted images of Little Ralphie in his pink rabbit suit, Kid Rock, Christmas angels, buildings and streetscapes of downtown Clarkston.
Those are some of the favorites of Cindi Sans, the artist who painted them, as well as thousands of young rock hunters posting their trophies on “Clarkston Rocks” on Facebook.
“Their stories, they just touch me. They’re so precious,” said Sans, who was born and raised in Clarkston, graduating from Clarkston High School in 1976. “It’s a small thing I can do to help people right now. I’ve met so many people, it’s amazing.”
Clarkston Rocks started this past summer for the kids, at a good time for Sans.
“I was really sick and couldn’t do much of anything,” she said. “I saw it online. In July, I was able to start painting.”
Her cousin Jan Zwicker helps out, finding places around town to hide the painted rocks.
She hid a Kid Rock rock in Clarkston Independence District Library by some of his CDs, and a Grinch rock by the “Grinch” movie.
“She loves coming up with unique places to hide them,” Sans said. “She gets as much joy from it as I do.”
Rocks painted with angels are popular, especially during the Christmas season.
“One lady sent a message, her dad was going into surgery and he held onto it when going into surgery and when he got out,” the artist said. “I sent some to Troops Need Love Too. A chaplain sent a video back – I sent a Snoopy angel rock and he has it on his desk.”
The work has helped her as she deals with her illness, which she discovered after Thanksgiving last year when she went to Pine Knob Urgent Care.
“I couldn’t get up without fainting,” she said.
She was admitted to Genesys Regional Medical Center, where her condition was very serious.
“I coded a couple times. My family was called,” she remembered.
She has been treated for stage four cancer in her stomach and bones. There’s no cure, but it’s treatable, she said.
“I’ll be taking a pill for the rest of my life,” she said. “So far, it’s helping.”
Her condition affects her thumbs, so she has to paint in different ways, but paint she does. She has been painting 7-8 rocks at a time about twice a week since July, at least 200 altogether.
“They bring a smile to someone’s face. It makes your day,” she said. “It’s fun meeting all these different people. It’s touched me, and helps me feel better. That, and finally having some hair.”
Her youngest of three children, Austin Sans, helps by driving her around.
“He’s my right hand. He takes me everywhere,” Cindi said. “He’s the rock of the family.”
“She’s becoming a Clarkston celebrity,” Austin said. “She really loves it. People are really attached to these rocks.”
Cindi has been an artist all her life
“As a child, my mom let me make messes and create things,” she said. “I was always doodling in school.”
Jobs over the years include insurance, work at a horse farm, and advertising at the Clarkston News from 1984-1985, “a variety of jobs, but I always found time to paint,” she said.
She has painted rocks before, along with mailboxes and other objects.
“It’s not really that difficult. You get used to uneven surfaces,” she said. “A mailbox I painted in 2014 is still good.”
She gets her rocks from Facebook fans, but most from her cousin.
“She bought some big bags of large Caribbean beach pebbles from Home Depot,” Cindi said.
It takes about a half hour for Cindi to paint a rock, sometimes longer for bigger samples, all finished with 2-3 coats of Rustoleum spray.
For the holidays, she’d working on 12-days-of-Christmas rocks, and also paints ornaments for sale online to places as far away as England and Australia.
For Halloween, she painted horror-movie characters, like Pennywise the clown.
“It was Michael Myers for me,” Austin said.
Clarkston Rocks was created by parents on Facebook as something for their kids to do over the summer, and now has more than 2,000 members.
“It’s nice to see it spread,” Cindi said. “Seeing the kids with their bags to find the rocks, it’s so cute.”