Robin Lucier’s Chevrolet Monte Carlo just wasn’t cutting it anymore.
The Seymour woman has had the 20-year-old car for 13 years.
“I have a fuel leak. My door doesn’t close. I’ve had an oil leak in it. I’ve got a bearing going out in it,” she said. “It has just been one mess after another. I have no heat, no air.”
She doesn’t trust the car to get her to Clarksville for follow-up appointments since she’s in remission from kidney cancer, so she has had to ask others to give her a ride there and back.
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Despite being diagnosed with cancer in 2015, Lucier never missed a day of work because she’s a single mom and had to have income. She’s an assistant manager of the Subway restaurant on Seymour’s west side, which is managed by Cheyenne Gilpin and is one of seven owned by Marcie Kapfhammer.
“When I was tired or didn’t feel well and needed a break, they let me go to my car and sleep in my car for an hour,” Lucier said of her bosses. “They would come and wake me up, and I would continue to work. They’ve been amazing to me. They are wonderful people.”
Knowing the struggles Lucier had with her car, Gilpin was determined to help his co-worker and friend. Both have worked for Subway for 13 years.
He recently called Kapfhammer and told her he would be willing to give her a down payment and have the rest of the money taken out of his paycheck to buy Lucier a new car. He also wanted to buy the Monte Carlo so Lucier would have a backup vehicle.
“I’m tired of her freezing in the winter, and she has to sit there and let it run, run, run, and she can’t defrost anything because there’s no heat. She has to stop on the side of the road to wipe (the windows) down and so on and so forth,” Gilpin said. “I said, ‘I’m just tired of her having to struggle with it.'”
Kapfhammer asked Gilpin to give her some time to think about it, and she came up with a plan.
One of her head managers, Courtney Clouse, has driven a Kia Sportage for 10 years as a company car, going back and forth to the seven stores Kapfhammer owns — three in Seymour, one in North Vernon, one in Crothersville and two in Louisville, Kentucky.
Kapfhammer said it was time for Clouse to get a new vehicle to use, and knowing the Kia was well taken care of, it was perfect to give to Lucier.
“I said, ‘What do I owe you?’ and she says, ‘I don’t want you paying me anything,'” Gilpin said. “Then I asked her, ‘I want to know if I can buy the other car she has to give back to Robin to have backup in case anything happens,’ and she goes, ‘I don’t want you paying me anything for that, either.'”
Kapfhammer said she was happy to do this for Lucier.
“She has worked for us for 13 years, and she has been a great employee, and I know that she has fallen on hard times off and on during employment with us,” she said. “I was really touched that (Gilpin) had come up with the idea to even do that, so I just said, ‘Cheyenne, I’ll make it work. I’ll take care of it.'”
On Wednesday, Gilpin and Kapfhammer surprised Lucier with the Kia.
“I don’t even have words to describe it,” Lucier said. “They are wonderful people, amazing people. Cheyenne is my best friend anyway. He has always been that way, and Marcie, she has helped me through so much. They are like family to me, and it’s great because I don’t have family here. I’m not from Indiana.”
Originally from the state of Washington, Lucier moved to Brownstown 13 years ago and has lived in Seymour for the past 10 years. All the while, she has worked for Kapfhammer.
“They have taken on the role of being my family, so it’s amazing,” Lucier said of Gilpin and Kapfhammer.
Lucier cried when she was told about her “new” car and getting to keep the Monte Carlo, and Gilpin and Kapfhammer becoming emotional, too.
“I’m an emotional person anyway because my heart is always on my sleeve,” Gilpin said. “I would rather do without than somebody to get me something. Everybody asks me every year what I want for Christmas, and I say, ‘Nothing because I have everything. I have life, I have wake up every day and I breathe and I go to work and I have my family.'”
Kapfhammer said it’s a moment she won’t soon forget.
“You know your employees, and you know that each one of them sometimes during their employment falls upon hard times, but I didn’t realize that the car never had the air conditioning working and the heat, so all of these years, she had been dealing with that and never said a word to anybody,” she said. “It was a priceless moment seeing her reaction and knowing that I could do something that helped lighten her load.”
Lucier drove the Kia around the building and then returned to work.
“I worked all day (Wednesday) and it was the longest day ever because I just wanted to get in the car and drive it,” Lucier said, smiling. “You get a car and you can’t drive it until 5 o’clock, I was like, ‘Ugh!'”
Once she got off work, she spent most of the evening in her “new” car.
“It is so great. I drove it all night long,” she said, laughing. “I went to my daughter’s and honked the horn and had her come out and look at it. I just cruised around and then went back to work to check on everyone at work because I’m an assistant manager there and I go in and check up on things.”
Finally, she realized it was time to go home so she would be ready to go back to work Thursday morning.
Even with a “new” vehicle, Lucier is remaining dedicated to her job. When she’s not there, though, she said she will be cruising around town in her Kia.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” she said.