A Navy Veteran Started a Car Repair Fund

I spent years in the Navy before I ever turned a wrench professionally. The military teaches you a particular way of looking at problems: identify the mission, assess the resources, execute. It also teaches you that when someone on your team is down, you don't walk past them. You stop and help, because the mission depends on everyone being operational.

That mindset didn't leave when I took off the uniform. It's the reason the Stranded Motorist Fund exists.

What I Saw at the Shop

After my service, I founded Adam & Son Auto Repair in Colorado Springs. Over the years, I watched a pattern repeat itself that I couldn't ignore. A customer would come in with a serious mechanical problem — a failed transmission, a blown head gasket, a timing chain that let go. The repair estimate would come back at $1,500 or $2,000. And the person across the counter would go quiet, because they didn't have it.

These weren't people who were careless with money. They were working families, often holding down two jobs, often with kids. They'd been getting by, and then a single mechanical failure put everything at risk. Without the car, they couldn't get to work. Without work, they couldn't pay rent. The domino effect was predictable and devastating, and I watched it happen over and over.

The Gap No One Was Filling

I started asking around — where do people go when they can't afford a critical car repair? The answer was discouraging. There were scattered resources: a church that might help with gas money, a social services agency with a small transportation fund that was perpetually empty. But there was no dedicated, organized fund focused specifically on emergency vehicle repairs for people in crisis.

So in 2020, I started one. The Stranded Motorist Fund began as a 501(c)(3) with a straightforward mission: provide emergency vehicle repairs and donated cars to individuals and families facing transportation crises in the Colorado Springs area.

Why Credibility Matters

For donors and grant makers evaluating SMF, the founder's background matters because it speaks to operational credibility. I'm not a policy researcher who identified a gap in a dataset. I'm a shop owner who watched families fall apart because of a car repair they couldn't afford, and I built an organization to address it.

That means SMF's processes are grounded in practical knowledge of what repairs actually cost, which shops do honest work, and what a realistic timeline looks like for getting someone back on the road. We don't estimate repair costs from a spreadsheet. We know what a water pump replacement runs because we've done thousands of them.

The Mission Continues

The Navy taught me that you take care of your people. At Adam & Son, I learned who "your people" really are — they're everyone in your community who needs help and can't get it on their own. The Stranded Motorist Fund is the bridge between a broken car and a stable life, and every repair we fund keeps one more family from falling through the cracks.

That's the mission. It hasn't changed since day one.