Time, Talent & Treasure ft. Joel Ayres of AACF

[00:00:00] My name is Carl Anthony, and I work in the automotive industry in Detroit.

[00:00:06] Sometimes that work encompasses future vehicle technology, and that's what we talk about here.

[00:00:12] For the most part, anyway. This is AutoVision News Radio.

[00:00:16] For most of his life, as far back as the late 1960s and early 70s, Joel Ayres has had a of the SEMA Memorial Scholarship Committee. Today, Joel is the executive director of the Automotive Aftermarket Charitable Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that helps automotive aftermarket industry members and their immediate family when they need it most. The organization, abbreviated as AACF for short, has existed for over 60 years.

[00:01:44] Moving at the speed of mobility, this is AutoVision News Radio with Carl Anthony in Detroit, and Joel shared more about the teams he loves. I'm a Kansas City Chiefs and a San Francisco 49er fan, but I'm glad to see Detroit finally. I love Barry Sanders, and I wish they would have done that, why he was good. I grew up a Joe Montana fan originally, so I was a San Francisco 49ers fan, and then by proxy, a Chiefs fan.

[00:03:01] Yeah, well, that was funny when I moved actually

[00:03:05] from Kansas City to the Bay Area, our own industry members, but we focus only on our industry or only on our industry families. That's the main thing that sets us apart from other charities out there. It was started by some gentlemen on the East Coast that one of their colleagues had a long battle with cancer and passed away. They wanted to help his widow who had never been

[00:04:20] employed and they'd used up all their insurance, etc. So they got a group of people, a group of time supporters. We have one gentleman that that's actually how it how that program started had given us 15,000 and which at that time I think put him at the platinum level and he said do you have anything higher than that? And I said no but we can create something if you want to so he said well I'll give you another 10,000 and that's how the champion program came about. And yeah but

[00:06:44] somebody knows somebody on the board, you know, they say, Hey, we,

[00:06:47] we have this employee that something happened, an accident or whatever. And are we have this customer that their store was, you know,

[00:06:51] wiped out by the hurricane in their home. And so that's,

[00:06:53] that's where it comes from. It comes from,

[00:06:55] comes from referrals more than anything on the AACF website are

[00:07:00] testimonials. I will read a couple of them now.

[00:07:04] I cannot tell you what these checks means to me. It gives me a life.

[00:08:02] that's what makes it all worthwhile. We exist to help people and like any charity does.

[00:08:06] What I love about it is,

[00:08:07] I've been in this industry for over 40 years,

[00:08:10] as you can tell by my hair color.

[00:08:13] Luckily as a podcast jewel, so nobody can see.

[00:08:17] Good, good idea.

[00:08:18] But as I get reminded, my lady reminds me that she says,

[00:08:22] at least you have care.

[00:08:23] So, you know, I. And so I decided to get involved with Big Brothers, got a little brother and became a mentor, a big brother to him. But the closest at the time, I lived in a small town in Indiana, and the closest Big

[00:09:41] Brother agency was about an hour away.

[00:09:44] So I started, I was 21 years old, I get up every morning knowing that today instead of selling a product, not that that's not a good thing to do, but that I'm going to be helping people or having surrounded by people that want to help. And that's kind of our board. I mean, if you look through

[00:11:04] our board of directors, they're all executives, pretty high powered executives of big companies. further their education and their lives and art industry and the automotive aftermarket. You read their stories and while it's somewhat more depressing, whether it's Heart Gallery or Team of Cares or ACF, there are so many heartwarming results that happen because of the stuff we do.

[00:12:21] And it's tough. I worked with Child Help, you get hit with something. What was it like when you received your diagnosis? Take us back through that. When I got the phone call after my test, yeah, I was kind of shook up. And when I did one thing,

[00:13:43] I'm going to, I'm going to joke. I'm going to be happy.

[00:13:45] I'm not be happy about it, I must have the wrong room and asked my name stuff. And I said, no, this is that. And the balloon said, it was from my youngest daughter, it said, congratulations at the boy. I'm a big sister. So, so that she inherited some of my type of humor. I had another daughter made me a t shirt for Christmas. And I had also had polio in my left

[00:15:05] leg cancer was in my right leg. And she made meares page and on that page are three organizations that are mentioned. The Austin Hatcher Foundation for Pediatric Cancer, Child Help, and Victory Junction. The Austin Hatcher Foundation for Pediatric Cancer provides services to children with cancer and their families through industrial arts therapy, diversionary therapy, psycho

[00:16:25] oncology, and healthy lifestyle education. child help which is for abused children. So we got the the Petty Victory Junction camp. We got brought in child help and then we later brought in Austin Hatcher, Foundation for Pediatric Cancer. And Mike Spagnuolo, who is now the CEO and President of SEMA, after hearing me talk at one of the events, he came up to me and said I'd like to be involved.

[00:17:43] And he came up with the idea for the SEMA Pin's this thing, do all you can with what you have and the time you have. And that's what I've tried to do and that's what I hope to keep on doing until I take my last breath. And I'm a believer in, you know, you put out there to the universe, put that energy out there, it comes back to you. To learn more about the Automotive Aftermarket Charitable Foundation and C. McCares,

[00:19:04] see the links in the show notes. AutoVision News Radio is available on Spotify,