Helping makes good guy feel good

OREM — Dave Adams did not put me up to this.

He doesn't have a PR agent. He doesn't send out press releases.

World acclaim is not why he fixed those cars.

Dave runs an auto-body repair shop, G/3 Collision Auto Repair, on the west side of the freeway in Orem.

Last month he was watching the news on television when a report came on about a moose that wandered out of the mountains and onto the BYU campus in Provo.

The school called the Division of Wildlife Resources, whose conservation officers arrived with tranquilizer darts to subdue the moose so the animal could be safely transported back into the hills.

All went according to plan until the tranquilized moose staggered away from the officers and fell onto two cars in the Marriott Center parking lot.

Luckily, the students who owned the cars — Cassi Elton owned the Toyota and Chris Hair owned the Saturn — weren't in them at the time.

Unluckily, when they arrived on the scene, they were told by the DWR that its lawyers had reviewed the situation and determined that the state was not liable for the moose's actions and would not pay for the damage.

And the moose sure wasn't going to.

It was at this point of the broadcast that Adams turned to his wife and said, "They're making a mountain out of a molehill. We'll fix their cars for free."

He called the news department at Channel 4 — that's the station he was watching — and asked the reporter to get word to the students that his shop would repair their cars free of charge.

That's how Dave became part of the moose story.

When I drove into the parking lot of G/3 Collision Auto Repair this week I had one question for Dave: Why did he do it?

Diplomatically he assured me it wasn't so I'd show up.

He meant that in the kindest way.

"I did not do it for the publicity," he said. "I have to apologize for all the response it's generated. (In addition to considerable media attention, several paying customers have chosen G/3 because of the moose story.) That's not what we look for. That's not why we did it.

"We did it because it gives you a good feeling when you see a need and it's within what we can do."

(Note: Dave uses "we" and "you" a lot when he means "me" and "I.")

The students, he said, "were kinda stunned" by the offer. Both showed up at G/3 the next day. Cassi Elton's Toyota was fixed that very day, which was a good thing since she'd already made plans to drive cross-country to Pennsylvania the next morning.

"She insisted on taking a picture of me with the car," said Dave. "Her parents are in England and sent the coolest package with all sorts of goodies."