Saving those steps - which actually number 88 - has become a passion project for two women with Shamokin roots. One of them, Allison Williams, used to climb the stairs every day as a child. The other, Kathy Vetovich, has been trying to pump life back into the hardscrabble town 130 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Vetovich, president of the Shamokin Area Business for Economic Revitalization (SABER), owns several properties downtown, and turned a former church into a coffeehouse at the base of the stairs. Shamokin has nine sets of public stairs, and Vetovich said they should be signs of life, not grave markers of the past.