In February 2017 a mechanic in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, handed a stranger the keys to his truck so the man could get to a funeral. The stranger was Todd Steinkamp, from Iowa. He was driving to Green Bay for the funeral of the wife of the owner of the company where he works. She was 93.
It was 7 a.m. on a Monday. He had driven 300 miles and had 70 to go when a loud grinding sound started coming from his front left tire. His car was giving out in Wild Rose, a village of 725 people. He spotted a convenience store called Lauritzen Sports with an auto shop attached to it.
“I thought, ‘I’m not going to make this funeral,'” Steinkamp told CBS News. He went inside looking for anybody at all. A 74-year-old man in a flannel shirt and a trucker hat was stocking shelves with oil. Steinkamp tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he knew anyone who could fix a car.
The man was Glenn Geib. “I’m the mechanic here,” he said. “What are you all dressed up for?” Steinkamp told him about the funeral. “I’ll see if I can fix it,” Geib said. “Pull it around back.”
It was the wheel bearing. Geib could fix it, but the part had to be ordered, and that would take a couple of hours. Steinkamp asked where he could rent a car. A store down the street had one rental car, and it was not available. The closest rental place was 40 miles away. “I was distraught,” Steinkamp said. “Pretty pathetic really.”
Then Geib reached into his front pocket and pulled out his keys.
“Take my truck. Fill it up with gas, don’t turn on the emergency lights and get going.”
The truck was a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado with emergency lights on the roof. The two men had met about ten minutes earlier. “At this point, I didn’t know his name, he didn’t know my name,” Steinkamp said. Geib would not take no for an answer, so Steinkamp got in and went.
He made the funeral. How he got there, in a pickup with lights on top, was the talk of the luncheon afterward. “As sad as funerals are, this did add some levity to the day,” he said. About seven hours later he drove back to Wild Rose, returned the truck, and picked up his repaired car.
Later that week Steinkamp wrote about it on Facebook for his friends, and the story spread well beyond them. The people who know Geib were not surprised. His employer, Lauritzen Sports, thanked him publicly for taking care of the store, its customers, and the village. His granddaughter, Lisa Spreitzer, wrote: “That’s my grandpa! And he probably doesn’t even think what he did was a big deal.”
Ten minutes and a set of keys
Steinkamp needed to be somewhere 70 miles away in a few hours, and every ordinary way of getting there had just closed. Geib had a truck out back that he was not using that morning. That is the whole exchange. It took ten minutes because there was nothing to work out.
What stays with us is the line Geib added after the keys to his truck were already in another man’s hand.
“She’ll do 120 miles per hour if you need it to.”
He was not describing a sacrifice. He was making sure the favor would actually work. Earlier this year we told the story of a woman in Minnesota who gave a stranger a van so he could get to work. That one was a gift and this one was a loan for a day, but the shape is the same. Somebody was stuck. Somebody else had exactly the thing, sitting idle. The only part missing was the ten minutes in which they met.
Where this story comes from
Originally reported by CBS News (Jennifer Earl), published February 23, 2017. Retold here with the details as that report gives them.
