Fort Mill’s ‘Car Chick’ wanted to help COVID-affected families. The Christmas spirit poured in.
LeeAnn Shattuck has no beard, no elves, no reindeer. She wears no red suit -- unless it’s a car racing suit. But this Fort Mill lady the automotive world knows as the “The Car Chick” sure brought Christmas to four families in this awful economic time of COVID-19. And she didn’t even need a sleigh equipped with a V-8 Hemi engine and a four-barrel carburetor to do it.
The best part?
She didn’t mean to do so much. But she did.
With a lot of help.
Shattuck’s “The Car Chick” business in Fort Mill, just south of Charlotte, has held up during the coronavirus pandemic. She finds cars for women and some men, and does podcasts and TV to make cars and car maintenance understandable for those who don’t know a monkey wrench from a torque converter.
“I was so grateful these past months for my own business to have made it through, but I just thought, ‘What about all those people who got pounded by COVID?’ ” Shattuck said. ‘There’s thousands of people whose jobs went away.”
She had an idea in early December. Find a family in her adopted home town of Fort Mill who had been affected by the economics of COVID, and help them. She would buy no holiday gifts for family this year, nor accept any. Her money would go to a stranger.
“This 2020 COVID year, let’s face it. It stunk for so many people,” Shattuck said. “Hard-working people who were in danger of losing everything. I wanted to help one family myself. What I found was people wanted to help too.”
Donations pour in
A friend at the Fort Mill school district who works as a counselor for families enduring homelessness and other economic problems found a single dad whose job was lost amid the COVID shutdown. The dad had three kids. The rent was past due. The guy had found a new job, but all those past due bills had piled up. Eviction loomed like an avalanche running down a mountain.
“No way was this family going out in the street,” Shattuck said. “Not on my watch.”
Shattuck put her idea out on Facebook to the Baxter village area where she lives, on her business Web site, and set up a donation site. An avalanche came, but it was money. A cascade of donations poured in to help the family.
“All of a sudden I found that people had been so generous we needed more families to help,” Shattuck said. “To say the response was overwhelming doesn’t even come close. I heard from customers, people I hadn’t talked to in 30 years, people from all across the country and locally. It was, well, it was awesome.”
What she found in area families broke her heart. Internet shut off for nonpayment when kids are going to school online. Heat close to being shut off as temperatures dropped below freezing. Car payments in arrears with the repo man lurking with a tow truck.
“These are real people right here in Fort Mill where we all live,” Shattuck said. “These are people hurt by the pandemic, financially.”
Another family of a mom and dad, including three kids and a granny, were found. Then two more families, including a mom with two kids, and a couple with three kids where the mother is battling a chronic disease.
When the money was counted after four days of giving, and included her own donation, more than $17,000 had been raised. Each of the four families now has a clean slate. No more utility notices saying “Cut off date.” No evictions. No repo men.
“One place, I rushed into an apartment complex office with a check right as they closed,” Shattuck said. ‘The sheriff was supposed to show up the next day and evict them. There was no eviction.”
The joy of giving around Christmas and the holidays
Shattuck’s last trip was to pay the rent for the last family. The man of the house started to cry. Shattuck started to cry.
“Here we were on the front stoop wearing our masks and social distancing and crying our eyes out together,” Shattuck said.
Shattuck even gave gift cards for the families to use for groceries and yes - some Christmas presents.
“Every one of these families can start fresh in January and not look over the shoulder all the time wondering if this is the day they end up in the street,’ Shattuck said.
What LeeAnn Shattuck said she found through the December fundraising was an “eye-opener.”
She saw the need in Fort Mill -- a suburb known more for its affluence and schools and quality of life than its eviction notices. She saw the heroic struggles of working people to stay afloat during an economic and health crisis. And she saw the huge heart of those who donated.
COVID and 2020 tried to break the hearts of so many people, Shattuck said. But during the Christmas holiday season, which includes Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and is about service and joy and love, that heart refused to yield.
That heart, said LeeAnn Shattuck, is huge. And that heart beats onward, COVID or not..
This story was originally published December 24, 2020 at 7:54 AM.
