SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) — With the eager anticipation of a child galloping down the stairs to the living room on Christmas morning, Amanda Galloway walked into the repair garage at Vern Eide Motors in Sioux Falls on Saturday morning to reunite with her 2008 Chevy Impala.
Oh, the seven month journey — well, ordeal — both Galloway and the car had been put through by a now-closed repair shop called “MAGA Motors,” which is facing several lawsuits, according to South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.
Galloway’s eyes turned to saucers when she approached the car.
”Aww, I haven’t seen this thing since September,” Galloway uttered. Those same eyes would flow with tears once she opened the trunk. More on that later.
But first, she opened the driver’s side door to find an interior more spotless than when she purchased the vehicle in August.
“They even cleaned it, too,” Galloway said.
What a mess it had been, and she had been through.
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Two months ago, Dakota News Now reported a story about MAGA Motors’ fleecing of Galloway. She was on a cross country move from Tennessee to Seattle with her four-year-old son, finally free of a life that had included an abusive marriage and bitter divorce. Of her three options for that trip, Galloway chose the route through I-90 in South Dakota so they could see and perhaps hike The Badlands.
But they fell a few hours short of the iconic national park. On I-29 near Sioux Falls, the Impala broke down on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, when most repair shops were closed.
Galloway’s tow truck driver recommended she take it to MAGA, where she found co-owner and manager Tracy Hicks to be “down to Earth.” She rented a car to drive the rest of her 1,477 miles to Seattle.
“I was coming out of a bad situation, then I had faith in somebody and they let me down and it was just like being kicked when you’re already down,” Galloway said.
She paid $1,000 up front for parts and thought she’d see the vehicle again by October. But by February, Galloway had not heard from Hicks in about three months and was still sitting and waiting in Washington when she received a letter in the mail saying her car was sitting in a Sioux Falls tow lot, who she owed $1,000.
”My car’s being held hostage for money I don’t have sitting in the bank because I’m a domestic violence victim that just fled and left and moved all the way, literally from one corner of the country to the other,” Galloway told DNN on Feb. 19.
Galloway did some digging, made some calls, and found out that MAGA Motors was evicted in January. Without her knowledge, Galloway’s car was moved to a local tow lot, and sat there for over a month, racking up $52 daily fees she couldn’t afford.
”It’s not putting a great taste in my mouth about the state of South Dakota,” Galloway said at the time.
An employee at Vern Eide Motors saw the story on Dakota News Now and was struck by those words. He did not want to leave Galloway, or any visitor of the state, coming away with that feeling about his state.
That’s when everything changed.
The next day, the company towed Galloway’s car into one of its repair shops. She was spared the $1,000-plus.
“What he didn’t know was how far in he was getting when he got there,” Galloway said. “When he got in my car, there were a lot of things that had been removed that were not supposed to be.”
The engine is what needed repair, yet the front axle had been removed and placed it in the front passenger seat, leaving a tapestry of black sludge. Muddy paw prints littered the back seat, leading Galloway to conclude the window had been left down long enough for a creature to crawl in and inhabit the vehicle as it sat it either the MAGA lot or the tow lot during winter months.
”I was ready to give up on it,” Galloway said of the car. “I was literally ready to give up on it because it was becoming an upside down situation.”
But the management at Vern Eide insisted it wanted to fix the Impala. Less than two months later when Galloway walked into the Vern Eide garage, the car had over $4,000 worth of repairs — new engine, new tires, and a newly-detailed interior.
Her total bill — not one penny.
”I’ve been inconvenienced for six or seven months, but at the end of it, I’m definitely coming out on top,” Galloway said.
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After Galloway got the call from Vern Eide that the car was ready, she booked a flight for Friday, April 12. Through her maddening MAGA saga, she had connected for a few weeks with several other customers who also claimed to be swindled by Hicks. This included Judy Kubiszweski, a fellow domestic abuse victim who Dakota News Now profiled a week later in a similar story of MAGA Motors colossally proverbially hanging her and her unfixed car out to dry. It still sits in a junkyard.
Kubiszweski invited Galloway to stay at her home on Friday night. She picked up Galloway from the airport, then drove her to Vern Eide the next morning. Galloway didn’t want to be alone on her return trip to see a car that had been through the physical ringer in the same way Hicks had rattled the two women psychologically.
The emotions — anger, pain, despair, misery, sadness, hope, relief, and finally, joy — came to a head when Galloway opened the trunk to the Impala on Saturday morning, with Kubiszweski by her side.
“Oh, now I’m going to cry,” Galloway said as she welled up at a space full of belongings she had left behind back in September — a time capsule that included some of her son’s pre-school drawings and writings, and the vest of her emotional support service dog, who died in May.
“Oh, my sweet baby. I’m so glad to have this back,” Galloway said as she picked up and clenched the vest. “Holy, Moly. Oh, my buddy.”
The emotional toll of several years of an abusive relationship, followed by a long and painful divorce trial — which Galloway said was full of searing attempts to defame her character and keep her from custody of her son — was enough adversity before Galloway left Tennessee for Seattle.
The nightmare of being in the dark about her car, then slapped with a four-figure tow bill, only compounded her trauma as Galloway started her new life in the Pacific Northwest with her son and new husband. She lost a considerable, unhealthy amount of weight, which forced her to take medication to gain it back.
While she was able to work from home, Galloway couldn’t take her son to day care because she didn’t have a car. This didn’t make for an ideal environment as a “business advisor” forIron Mountain, an information management services company used by more than 225,000 organizations across the world, including 95% of the Fortune 1000.
But the last couple weeks, knowing she’d have the Impala back soon to change that scenario, Galloway flourished.
“Fish can’t climb a tree,” Galloway said. “You’ve got to be in the right environment to thrive, and really just getting out of the place of negativity with all of that around me, everything has gotten better. Everything. A commission-based job. I just got the biggest check ever from this job and I owe it to this. When I relax, my work is relaxed and my quotas go boom.”
When the Impala broke down, Galloway called her brother, who told her, “who knows what’s good or bad.” Those words became prophetic.
“I was putting it in to fix a problem that I had with some oil, and now I’ve got new tires and a deep-cleaned vehicle and a new engine,” Galloway said.
She also has a restored faith in humanity. And, yes, a much more favorable impression of South Dakota and South Dakotans.
“Much better,” Galloway said. “I’ve been connected with some incredible people. You, the wonderful man at Vern Eide that has assisted me, and, Judy. I got to meet Judy, and she has been incredible, as well. She’s been a huge connection through all of this to find somebody who has been through the same thing.
“I am comfortable coming back, for sure. So, if I need something, I’ve got some good contacts in town. I know who some good people are here now.”
With her MAGA fiasco finally in the rear view mirror, Galloway drove out of town in it — this time alone, cranking up her music and finally making it to The Badlands, then past the Black Hills and through other mountainous landscapes in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and her new state of Washington.
Before arriving home on Monday morning, Galloway almost ran into yet another disaster on the Wyoming-Montana border. A security guard told her the road was closed and it was best she took a different — and more jagged and challenging — route to avoid an avalanche. This time, a real one.
So, she embarked on an 80-mile sidetrack to get her back on course. What’s one more obstruction and diversion before life’s path finally becomes clear?
Galloway had come back to Sioux Falls to find her car fully repaired. Thanks to a kind soul at Vern Eide who did not want to be mentioned in this story, she finally feels that way about her life.
“It definitely gives me kind of a fresh start, a place to start fresh, and I feel this is going to be a huge piece of me actually being able to establish and move forward in Seattle in my new home and being able to have my life to be able to do my own thing,” Galloway said.
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