Wheeler: Raleigh charity rolls out the cheer

Drive is one thing Vanessa Condry is not lacking, even if she couldn't find it on the gear shift when she took possession of her manual 1998 Honda Accord in October. But, oh, how she thanks God for her dark-green baby every time she slides into its plush, beige seats.

"I'm good at it now, but in the beginning, I didn't know anything about driving that car," says Condry, a compact go-getter who rarely sits still. "It cut off a million times with people behind me blowing their horns, me putting the hazard lights on ... "

"But she did it," interjects John Bush, executive director of Wheels4Hope, a Raleigh nonprofit that fixes up donated cars and sells them for $500 to qualified low-income buyers such as Condry. Wheels4Hope is one of the charities seeking help on The N&O's Holiday Guide to Giving at bit.ly/givingguide

Condry has done a lot, in fact, since arriving in Raleigh essentially homeless four years ago. Her newlywed brother had sent her a bus ticket so she could leave a joyless job in Ohio, but Condry didn't want to intrude on the new couple for long.

She moved into the Urban Ministries' Helen Wright Center for Women, which referred her to the StepUP Ministry's yearlong Life Skills Program. To receive the ministry's training in financial literacy, goal setting and vocational planning, participants must be working. Condry managed a cleaning business before landing a seasonal job at FedEx once she got the car.

Sitting inside the Wheels4Hope office, the New Jersey native lowers her eyes in a humble way when she says with a voice full of happiness that she graduates from the stringent program this week.

Happiness even stronger than the odor of oil is exactly what permeates Wheels4Hope - from Condry's enthusiastic gratitude to Bush's quiet smile to the camaraderie among the volunteers that mechanic Maria Winslow embraces thankfully.

This charity completely embodies its motto of changing lives.

"When you don't have a car, you are almost in bondage," says Condry, 44. "You are so limited. I can go wherever now and look for a job. It's a wonderful thing."

This year, Wheels4Hope wanted to bless 100 people with that gift of freedom; the tally sits at 86. Bush says he's hoping readers will take stock of their tax needs and donate life-altering cars for 14 more people.

They'll take any car. The more expensive ones, they sell, using the money for parts and expenses. Cars in the $2,000 to $4,000 range, they fix up for the recipients with the help of volunteer mechanics and many parts donated by CarQuest. Junk cars, they use for parts or sell the metal.

One of the best things about the ministry is that recipients, who are referred through partner social service agencies, must invest $500 of their own money.

"That's important," Condry says. "If something is given to you, it doesn't have enough value to you. When you labor for the money to pay for it, it makes a big difference."

In one of the charity's five garage bays on South Saunders Street, Winslow is giving a once-over to a donated Buick LeSabre. The self-described car enthusiast is not a mechanic by training; she's a math and computer science graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Only one of the 25 volunteer mechanics is a working mechanic, she says, with the rest, surprisingly, being software engineers or retired IBMers.

"These are people who spend their whole careers making things that are abstract, but they're into problem-solving," says the diminutive Winslow, who is working on her own software startup in Chapel Hill.

Even more satisfying for Winslow and other volunteers is that literal blessings flow from their work - the charity conducts a "blessing ceremony" with every car and its recipient.

"When you see somebody waiting for a car and working really hard to achieve that, and the difference it makes," Winslow says as she shakes her head, trailing off. "We all stand around in a big circle, and there's a camaraderie because of the very obvious, big difference it makes to people. People cry."