Amanda Williams stepped in to help a stranger who was being attacked, only for her car to be stolen by the assailant.
The Crozat Family Foundation and G&C Auto Body recently donated a refurbished vehicle to a woman whose car was stolen and crashed when she stepped in to help a stranger who’d been stabbed.
Amanda Williams of Vallejo, CA, was on her way to get a coffee around 9 a.m. Aug. 11 in Vallejo when she saw a man lying on the ground, bleeding, with another man standing over him, holding two knives.
“I noticed he had knives in his hand, so then I started to get worried,” she told KTVU FOX 2. “I started yelling, ‘Hey, I’m going to call the police,’ and he had yelled at me, he said, ‘Hey, get out of here.’
“He went back to go and stab the guy in the head, and that’s when I automatically just jumped out of the car and ran over and grabbed his arm.”
Williams managed to take the knives from the assailant — who then jumped into her car and took off. He was arrested after a short police pursuit, during which he crashed Williams’ car. With liability insurance only, Williams could not repair the car, leaving her unable to make money as a DoorDash driver.
When her story made the local news, G&C Auto Body — the largest privately owned MSO in the U.S., with more than 50 locations in Northern and Central California — decided immediately Williams was an ideal candidate for a vehicle donation from its Crozat Family Foundation.
The foundation was founded in 2013 by Gene Crozat, G&C Auto Body’s co-founder and father of brothers Shawn, Patrick and Josh, who now run the business. He wanted to give a “hand up, not a hand-out” to individuals and families in need in Solano and Sonoma counties by donating refurbished vehicles, explained Ashley Bodell, community outreach manager for the foundation. The car donated to Williams was the foundation’s 301st.
Amanda Williams, far right, with several people involved in the donation.
“Amanda’s story popped up on the news, and if anybody was deserving of a hand up, it was her,” Bodell said. “What a beautiful thing, to save somebody’s life. She wrestled the knives out of this assailant’s hands. This is exactly the type of person that deserves such an incredible gift.”
Bodell said the Crozat Family Foundation aims to help people who have found themselves in “extraordinarily hard circumstances, and I would say that having your car stolen by somebody and totaled in a police pursuit is quite out of her hands.”
The foundation reached out to the Vallejo Police Department, who then contacted Williams.
On Aug. 26, Williams was presented a refurbished 2019 Mazda 3 at G&C Auto Body’s shop in Benicia.
Like most recipients of the foundation’s refurbished cars, Williams was “shocked more than anything,” Bodell said.
“I think people don’t believe that what we do is real,” Bodell said.
Bodell said it was a privilege for the foundation to be able to give the car to Williams, who is also a single mother.
“One of the things that Gene says, and that we tell every recipient at every giveaway, is that ‘It is a me and you world, and you are loved,” Bodell said. “I think that that really sums up all of our giveaways. We are here to be of service to one another, and if we can pay it forward, it just continues to bring goodness back into the world.”
The Crozat Family Foundation frequently donates refurbished vehicles in partnership with the National Auto Body Council’s Recycled Rides program, as well as Allstate, GEICO and USAA, which donate the vehicles. Along with a handful of independent giveaways, like Williams’, the foundation donates between 25 and 30 cars a year.
When Gene Crozat first started giving away cars, he bought them from local car auctions, and then personally found people who needed them. While the cars are now donated by insurance partners and the recipients mostly nominated through Recycled Rides, the foundation is still privately funded by Crozat, Bodell said. “The foundation started because Gene had such a big giving heart.”
“It is genuinely just out of the goodness of wanting to be of service to others,” Bodell said. “We have the partners that are willing to donate these cars. We have the ability to refurbish them and refurbish them well, and then we have the ability to give them.”
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