This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

You're about to hear from Mike Gideon.

Mike was just a gearhead who loved working on cars and restoring classics,

something he thought he'd retire on.

But God had other plans.

Here's Mike with the story of how higher power garage his nonprofit car repair

shop came to be.

Been a mechanic most of my life started when I was a child, a young man I always had an interest

in cars. Went to work in service stations, fresh out of high school.

Did that for a few years.

And then I left and went to a corporate job running a chain of quick loops.

And in that chain of quick loops, I was also responsible for helping to develop new business.

So I did a lot of that working with people to design buildings and

inventory and train their staff. And I did that for about five years. They'd call washes

for a while. It was unfortunately about a 70, 80 hour a week, most weeks. And after about five

years of that, I decided it was time to do my own thing.

I'd always had a desire to own a repair shop.

So in 1995, I started Gideon's Tired Auto.

We started off small.

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