“Good Bones” star Mina Starsiak Hawk has opened up about the shocking moment she learned her beloved sister-in-law, Stef, died from ethanol poisoning in March 2020.
In an emotional episode of her new HGTV spinoff, “Good Bones: New Beginnings,” the mother of two, along with husband Steve Hawk and their kids, paid a visit to her former business, the Two Chicks District Co. store in Indianapolis, which she closed at the end of 2023.
While walking through the empty property, Starsiak Hawk confessed it was a “sad day,” noting that the store had been a “a nice reminder of all the hard work of the last 10 years.”
Pausing at some photos hanging on the walls, the reality star pointed out several snaps of Stef to her kids, Jack and Charlie.
“There’s your Auntie Steffie,” she told them.
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Speaking in a confessional, she then revealed that she had been working at Two Chicks when she learned that Stef had died.
“When I got the call that Stef, Steve’s little sister, had passed away, I was there, working at the store,” she said while tearing up. “And when the store was done, and we did the big reveal … Stef wasn’t there.”
Starsiak Hawk and her husband previously opened up about Stef’s passing in an emotional episode of the HGTV star’s podcast, “Mina AF,” explaining that they had both noticed concerning changes in her behavior in the weeks leading up to her death.
“She started to have a pattern of behavior where every Monday and Tuesday she didn’t feel good, she wasn’t coming in, she was isolating, she wouldn’t let anyone into her house, she wouldn’t come to anything,” Hawk revealed.
“She’d been having this isolating behavior for quite some time, but it had gotten significantly worse.”
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‘A lot more than a store’
Reflecting on all that she and her family went through during the 3.5 years the Two Chicks store was open, Starsiak Hawk explained that the business held an incredibly sentimental place in her heart because of the memories wrapped up in it.
“It’s a lot more than just a store,” she said. “It’s all these memories and hopes and losses, tied into this one place that we’re now walking away from, and things are very different.”
New beginnings
Starsiak Hawk revealed at the end of 2023 that she had made the decision to close the business, explaining to People that it simply wasn’t making enough money to remain open.
However, she has not turned her back on the venture once and for all, opening up a new location of the Two Chicks store in nearby Noblesville, IN, earlier this year.
“There’s so many cool Queen Anne Victorians,” she told People of Noblesville. “There was one that I kind of had my eye on that’s like a block off the square that’s just a mess, which is perfect to me.”
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Moving forward
The loss of Starsiak Hawk’s sister-in-law plays a key role in the new “Good Bones” spinoff, a limited series that sees the renovator and her mother, Karen E. Laine, taking on separate and very personal renovation projects for the first time.
For Starsiak Hawk, her focus is on creating a safe haven for her family in the form of a lake house, where she hopes her husband can quietly come to terms with the loss of his sister, as well as his parents, who both died in 2018.
“The lake house is going to feel very healing for Steve because he’s lost so much,” Starsiak Hawk explained to People. “He’s going through life the best way he can after just some really, really epic loss in a very, very short amount of time.
“And because his time with his family was cut short, that’s really why we wanted this lake house for Jack and Charlie—really, for the long term, for the memories, for the experiences. So that’s, I think, why it’s really important to both of us.”
