EDMONDS, Wash. — Ten years ago this week, Donnie Davidsen walked into an Edmonds car dealership desperate for a second chance. Today, he’s living a life he once thought was out of reach, and he’s helping others do the same.
“I was a mess,” he told KIRO 7. “I was broken man, addicted, run into the law.”
At the time, Davidsen had been experiencing homelessness on and off for about 15 years. He was struggling to get clean and had spent time in jail. He had recently learned his girlfriend was pregnant.
“I just couldn’t get it right,” he said. “I went to churches and programs. Just didn’t seem to work out for me.”
Davidsen was finding strength in his faith, but he needed an opportunity to get him back on his feet. Call it fate: he walked right into it.
“I ran into a person I used to sell heroin with,” he said. “He had gotten a job at Campbell Nissan, and he looked healthy and well.”
That friend kept talking about it, telling Davidsen that “they like people like us.” He didn’t understand it at the time, but got on a bus and went in for an interview.
“Met the owner, Kurt, and I told him the truth about my story,” Davidsen said. “I told them that I was a chronic relapse failure, good at burning things down, but I just need somebody to take a chance on me…. He said, ‘When can you start?’”
Davidsen’s first day was ten years ago this week.
He started out cleaning cars when one of the service managers asked him if he’d like to learn how to fix them. The company sent him to school, and he became a technician.
“I just couldn’t believe it, because nobody had ever taken a chance on me,” he said.
Davidsen is now a service advisor. He’s six years sober. The baby he was preparing to welcome ten years ago is now nine years old. His name is River, and Davidsen describes him as “the reason” he comes to work every day.
“Donnie is, I think, emblematic of what we believe can happen to anybody,” said Bob Sherwood, Chaplain of Campbell Volkswagen and Campbell Nissan.
The role is unique. Sherwood, who previously worked as a pastor, had never heard of a chaplain role at a car dealership.
“My primary responsibility is just to kind of make my way through both stores, through the employees,” he said. “I just want to make sure they’re doing okay. And I can usually tell just through initial conversations and greetings whether they’re carrying a heavy load. And so I just want to be a resource to help them too.”
Sherwood has helped employees, including Davidsen, turn that second chance into lasting change.
“I know that for the owners, Kurt and Craig, in a way the business of selling and servicing cars is an avenue to do what’s really passionate for them, which is to help people,” he said.
Davidsen has tried to pay it forward too: giving back to nonprofits and organizations that both helped him or help people in a similar situation.
One of those organizations is Everett Gospel Mission, where he used to live. You can learn more or support them here.
“People who are stuck in addiction are doing the things that they do because they are just surviving,” he said. “I think kindness and being genuine with people, being able to sit down on the curb and just share their story or to listen.”