Wake up. Drop the kids at school. Go to work. Take your son to a dentist appointment. Take your daughter to soccer practice. Go to the grocery store. Go home.
Think how much time all those routine tasks take.
Now think how much longer those tasks take if you don't have a car.
That's part of what led Bob and Susanne Coffield, in the market for a new car, to donate their used Honda Odyssey minivan to the Good News Mountaineer Garage in September.
"Those things that you and I take for granted, food and housing and being able to get around, whether to work or to take your kid to a doctor's appointment, for some people that's a real struggle," said Bob Coffield, a Charleston attorney.
Once families like the Coffields donate their vehicles, the Good News Mountaineer Garage, in turn, passes those donated vehicles on to needy families. The garage gave 286 vehicles to needy West Virginia families in fiscal year 2015, which ended in June.
Each family is referred by the state Department of Health and Human Resources and must be enrolled in the WV WORKS program, which provides cash assistance and work training.
"In a rural state like West Virginia, if you don't have access to transportation, getting to those necessities in life becomes a lot harder," said Asley Orr, executive director of the garage, based on Charleston's West Side. She noted that not only do most cities and towns in West Virginia not have public transportation, but lots of places don't even have sidewalks.
"Just those little, offhand things that lots of parents have to deal with," she said. "You just sort of do it and you never think about it, but for a lot of people, they have to actually logistically map out every single thing. Whereas, we just jump in the car."
For Nancy, a Good News Mountaineer Garage client from Monongalia County, the car she got a year ago was a veritable life saver.
"I could bore you with self-defeating stories of how difficult my life had become, stories of violence, stories of pain, but I shall not," Nancy wrote to the strangers who donated their car in January. "This is a story of hope ... I thank you for giving me this chance to move forward and for restoring my faith. I shall pay your kindness forward."
Since its founding in 1999, the charity has donated vehicles to more than 2,300 West Virginia families.
In 2009, the organization did a follow-up survey to see how life had changed for the families that received cars.
It found that 87 percent were no longer receiving cash welfare from the government. Of the families that received cars, 36 percent were able to access better child care, 21 percent moved to better housing, 36 percent went to more school activities and 31 percent accessed better medical care.
The garage repairs and tunes-up donated cars and gives basic car maintenance training to the people who will receive the cars.
There is a tangible, monetary benefit to donating your used car. Donated cars are tax deductible. The average donor to the garage received a tax deduction of $608, according to the charity. (If you're feeling charitable, the tax year ends on Thursday, just FYI.)
The tax deduction, combined with skipping the hassle of negotiating with a dealer on the value of a trade-in, were factors that led the Coffields to donate their van. But they weren't the biggest factor.
When they began the donation process, the garage gave the Coffields a picture of the Mercer County family that would receive their van.
"The picture was a family with a little girl," said Susanne Coffield, the director of the Charleston Montessori School. "It's just the whole mission of what the Good News Mountaineer Garage does, that felt right to us, and we were glad that the van went to them."
Reach David Gutman
at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow
@davidlgutman on Twitter.