A McClellanville, South Carolina, auto mechanic and restaurant owner has repaired and gifted cars to 33 people in need over the past nine months.
“This gives me a chance to work on cars again, at my own pace,” Middleton told the Post and Courier in June.
Eliot Middleton, the 38-year-old co-owner of Middleton & Maker Village BBQ, spends his spare time fixing used cars and giving them to people in need in rural South Carolina.
“There’s a lack of transportation in the rural areas, and I knew I could use my previous experience in mechanics to help,” Middleton, a former auto mechanic and father of two, told The Washington Post.
Middleton first got the idea to repair and donate old cars when several families walked more than four miles to get a hot meal at a food drive he hosted in early 2020 because they had no transportation.
A January 2020 Facebook post by Middleton’s Village BBQ asked the community to donate junk cars in exchange for slabs of barbecued ribs.
“So I just had an idea…..Instead of junking a car with potential if you don’t really need the money consider donating it to Middletons Village Barbecue!!!” he wrote. “We would like to help folks in need of transportation in rural areas that don’t have bus transit or taxi cabs or even Uber!!!!”
In the small coastal fishing town where Middleton lives, there is no public transportation, Uber, or taxis. So far, Middleton has received 100 broken-down vehicles and gifted 33 of them.
In early July, Middleton told Fox News he’d made $48,000 in repairs. “I do what I can, and I give back what I can because the community supports me and my restaurant,” he added. The repairs are funded through donations and money from Middleton’s own pockets.
Melanie Lee, 59, was surprised when Middleton showed up to her home on Christmas Day last year and gifted her a with a white 1993 Oldsmobile.
“I had no idea what was going on,” Lee, who had never met Middleton, told The Washington Post. “He handed me the keys and didn’t ask for anything.”
Lee’s 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe broke down had recently broken down after she’d driven two hours daily to visit her ill 33-year-old son at hospital. He passed away just weeks before Middleton gave her the car.
Lee didn’t have the means to get the car repaired but needed a vehicle to help care for her two young granddaughters.
“This car meant everything to me,” she said. “It was so needed.”
Middleton spends the two days a week he’s not working at the restaurant repairing cars. At any given time there are as many as 20 cars in his front yard. Middleton followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as an auto mechanic for 15 years before opening the restaurant. He and his father opened an auto repair shop together in 2004. When his father’s health failed, Middleton closed the shop in 2014 and began pursuing opening the restaurant after cooking had remained a passion of his for years. Just months after he began collecting cars, his father died in March 2020.
Amid grief, managing the new restaurant, and the pandemic, it wasn’t until September that Middleton repaired his first car, and gave it to an unemployed and disabled single mother of two. Just two months later, the woman was able to land a stable job and buy a new car, and donated the repaired car back to Middleton.
“That blew me away,” Middleton said to the Post.
As the program gained momentum, Middleton started a nonprofit called Middleton’s Village to Village in order to help cover the costs of repairing the cars.
He spoke to ABC4 last year about the community’s generosity in terms of supporting his efforts. “Locals gave donations anonymously and said ‘hey, we want to help you, here’s a gift card to AutoZone.’ It led me to believe that other folks wanted to help folks as well,” said Middleton
In October, Middleton was awarded the Jefferson Award, a national honor that is given to American engaged in exceptional public service.
“It’s moving so fast it’s just incredible,” Middleton said to the Post. “There is no free time between the restaurant and the program, but I don’t get tired. Something just keeps pushing me to do more.”
