By John Gaskins and Gray News staff
Published: Apr. 17, 2024 at 9:59 AM EDT|Updated: 2 hours ago
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KSFY/Gray News) — A woman has finally reunited with her car after a seven-month ordeal that included the vehicle spending time in a South Dakota impound lot.
Amanda Galloway eagerly walked into the repair garage at Vern Eide Motors in Sioux Falls on Saturday morning to reunite with her 2008 Chevy Impala.
Galloway and the car had been put through an ordeal by a now-closed repair shop called MAGA Motors, which is facing several lawsuits, according to South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.
“Aww, I haven’t seen this thing since September,” Galloway said. 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.
Two months ago, KSFY reported a story about MAGA Motors and Galloway. She said was on a cross-country move from Tennessee to Seattle with her 4-year-old son, finally free of a life that she said had included an abusive marriage and bitter divorce. Of her three options for that trip, Galloway said she chose the route through I-90 in South Dakota so they could see and perhaps hike The Badlands.
But she said 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 said the 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 upfront 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, which 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 said 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 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.
After Galloway got the call from Vern Eide that the car was ready, she booked a flight for Friday. Through her maddening MAGA Motors 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 was profiled a week later in a similar story of her saying MAGA Motors failed to fix her car. It still sits in a junkyard.
Kubiszweski invited Galloway to stay at her home on Friday night. She picked up Galloway from the airport and 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 allegedly 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.”
Galloway said 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 said 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” for Iron Mountain, an information management services company used by more than 225,000 organizations across the world, including 95% of the Fortune 1000.
But in the last couple weeks, knowing she’d have the Impala back soon to change that scenario, Galloway said she 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.”
She said also has a restored faith in humanity and, yes, a much more favorable impression of South Dakota and South Dakotans.
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