Despite its parent company filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late today, Los Alamos RadioShack owner Bill Cabral said his store is doing well and he intends to keep it open.

“People have been coming in all day asking me if I’m going to have to close and I want everyone to know that I’m staying in business,” Cabral said. “I’m a franchise and I can buy product from anywhere … over the next month and a half I’ll be scrambling for inventory but after that we’ll be fine.”

Cabral explained that unlike the troubled company stores located in larger cities, franchisees operate in rural communities and have remained profitable.

The parent company plans to sell 1,500 to 2,400 stores to its largest shareholder, investment firm Standard General, and has filed a motion to proceed with closing the remainder of its 4,000 U.S. stores.

Sprint Corp. has a deal with Standard General to open mini-shops in as many as 1,750 of the RadioShack stores Standard General is buying. Sprint would take up about one-third of the retail space in each RadioShack store, and Sprint employees would sell mobile devices and Sprint plans. RadioShack said that the company’s franchise locations, as well as stores in Mexico and Asia, are not included in the deal.

“This bankruptcy didn’t happen overnight,” Cabral said. “It’s been moving in this direction for a year now and RadioShack has been positioning us to buy from other suppliers … with 1,000 franchisees, suppliers will be vying to sell inventory to us.”

Cabral hasn’t heard whether he will be required to stop using the RadioShack name and remove the large sign over the entrance to his store.

“Either way, I am staying in business,” he said.

Cabral purchased his first RadioShack franchise in 1995 in Espanola. He bought his Los Alamos frnachise in 2001 from Dan and Lynn Steele who originally opened the store in the 1970s in White Rock, Cabral said.

Cabral’s store at 999 Central Ave., Suite 150 is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and closed Sunday and Wednesday.

About RadioShack

RadioShack opened its first store and mail-order operation in 1921 in Boston to serve the needs of radio officers aboard ships. The company was bought in 1963 by Tandy Corporation, a retailer that started as a supplier of leather parts to shoe repair shops. RadioShack prospered as it introduced one of the first mass-market personal computers, the TRS-80, in 1977, and one of the first laptops, the Model 100, in 1983. It also was an early seller of both cell phones and satellite television systems.