When something goes wrong with your car, sometimes there is no money in the budget for repairs. One local ministry is trying to ease that headache for some families with a Car Care Clinic. The clinic is designed to help families that need minor repairs done to their cares. On Saturday at just one location sixteen families brought their cars in to get fixed from the experienced mechanics.
"Times are kind of tough. For myself and my wife, we were recently laid off from our jobs. My wife has found one and I am still looking. So, something like this when you don't have the funds available as readily available as you would like to have them it really helps," says Brian Simpson.
The 60 mechanics that volunteer their time have on average 20 years experience. All you have to do is pay for the parts and they will do the labor for free and the goal is spend about two hours and get these families back on the road.
"When we help people with transportation, we help people find jobs, keep jobs. We are helping people get to the grocery store, to doctors appointments, or we help them with little things like going to the movies or taking the kids to the park," says operations manager, Lonnie Vaughan.
Vaughan says the thing they do the most is breaks but today they worked on several doors that wouldn't lock and changed the oil. Recently this location got three new car lifts that have made the job much easier. There are six locations that work on cars once a month and eleven churches that help with organization of everything. Vaughan says the people they help aren't the ones you would normally think of.
"They are people who have pride and dignity. They are trying to make it. They want to take care of their families themselves and transportation is very important to that. We have some people say to us they might be homeless if it wasn't for that car," says Vaughan.
Car Care Clinic is available for people the third Saturday of every month. Last year the clinic, helped 504 families.
