From the outside, Yooper Pasty Company looks like a simple gray building, weathered by years of Upper Peninsula snowfall.

But when you walk inside, it's a whole different story.

- If you're lucky enough to still have a deer camp, God bless you.

And if you're lucky enough to have a camp or a cottage, if you're a troll, God bless you.

Are you lucky?

- [Stefanie] The moment you open the door, you're transported directly into the heart of an Upper Peninsula tradition.

- I wanted to have my own deer camp.

I wanted to have a place to hang out.

I wanted people to come in here and get the full experience of being a Yooper.

Everybody's got their awful afghan from grandma out at deer camp, you know, when your toes poke through the holes in the middle of the night.

We all remember what that feels like.

I was told once the best gift you can ever give to anybody is happiness.

And that's free.

Evoking sweet memories in nostalgia in people, I think brings happiness to a lot of people, young and old.

- [Stefanie] Heidi Ritter was born and raised in Ishpeming, a proud Hematite with deep Finnish roots.

After high school, she served in the Army National Guard and then went on to college.

- And I went to Northern Michigan University where I got my bachelor's degree in elementary education.

- [Stefanie] That's where she met her husband, Jeff.

They traveled the country as a Coast Guard family and then finally put down roots in the Soo when her husband retired.

(person shouting in background) My husband's here now.

He's a lot.

He's Southern.

Also very excitable down there.

Gotta love him, met him in Marquette.

Can you imagine?

He was the captain of the Buckthorn.

We had such a blast while he was doing that.

We fell in love with the community.

- Heidi quickly noticed the Soo was missing something very important.

- When I got here, there were no hot pasty shops.

As far as anybody knew, there were no dedicated pasty shops that ever existed here, which is insane being that once you cross the bridge, people are looking for pasties.

It kind of fired me up as a Yooper, I guess.

Just really got my gears going where I thought, maybe I could do it.

Maybe I could be the pasty person here because I've been making them my whole life.

- [Stefanie] So Heidi and Jeff bought this trailer and they got to work.

Baking in Barbeau in the middle of the night, three o'clock in the morning, walking across my dirt road with sacks full of pasties.

It just became a kind of phenomenon when we were parked in town here at the Valley Camp.

There were people waiting in line already before we even set up the generator.

- [Stefanie] As fast as she could make them, they were selling out.

- We started making bigger batches and then we decided right after we got the trailer that we needed to do something that had a kitchen, call our home base and be able to bake pasties.

And this opportunity was just blessed and given before us.

It was amazing and serendipitous.

- [Stefanie] Like many places in the Upper Peninsula, this building has a history.

On the first day that they started to set up shop, they discovered an unexpected surprise from the past.

- And in the bottom of the bin, there was a neon sign that says pasties.

And at that moment, I knew I was going to be all right.

And I plugged it in and I'll be darned if it lit up and I bawled.

- [Stefanie] The transition was far from easy.

Just two days before opening the doors, she received a devastating diagnosis, breast cancer.

- Facing cancer my entire first year and a half, I was here working, doing pasties.

Pasties and hockey saved my life.

- [Stefanie] Today, Heidi is healthy, sharing her passion for life with the next generation.

- We were able to partner with the Soo Eagles hockey team.

They come in after practice and they dial in here.

There's Meat Man.

There's Dough Boy.

You pick your position.

Dishwashing is always the last to be picked.

Imagine that.

When we really are grinding, we can absolutely turn out at least 200 pasties in one day.

When I was in the army, I had to shovel my own foxhole once.

That was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my entire life.

Chopping rutabagas is also really it's up there because you're having to cut a boulder in half.

- [Stefanie] Luckily, we didn't have to cut any root vegetables.

Instead, we helped put together some of her famous sweet pasties filled with fruit.

- It is such an art.

It's like sculpting.

It's really either you can do it or you can't.

And that's okay if you can't.

- [Stefanie] These are skills Heidi learned watching the generations of women work before her.

- As you know, it takes an entire assembly line to make it work.

Grandmas, nobody gives them enough credit for what they did for us.

I awoke this this inner Finnish grandma on me that's got to get the job done.

- [Stefanie] While the rest of the world debates whether ketchup or gravy belongs on top, Heidi has her own perspective.

- I say I don't care what you put on your pasty.

Just keep eating them.