Midas of Richmond's Mark Smith named 2018 Tire Dealer Humanitarian

RICHMOND, Va. — When was the last time someone reacted to something you said or did with a three-second wow?

Mark Smith had one of those wow moments he never will forget. The Midas of Richmond dealer was out on a Thursday, delivering backpacks filled with snacks and healthy foods to chronically hungry kids in Central Virginia. The food helps feed children from the time they leave school on Friday afternoon to when they return on Monday morning.

One of the kids jumped on the bumper of his Toyota Tundra, ran his fingers across as many of the backpacks as he could, exclaiming, "Wowwwww."

That experience was so heartfelt that Mr. Smith turned the episode into a radio spot: "When was the last time you had a three-second wow?" he asks. "This is a wow about feeding chronically hungry kids."

It turns out Mr. Smith has provided Richmond, his adopted home for the last two decades, plenty of wow-worthy moments while supporting a handful of nonprofits.

It started on Sept. 12, 2001 — the day after the infamous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and in Pennsylvania — when, as a "total knee-jerk reaction" to the events of the previous day, he suggested the crazy notion of offering free oil changes to anyone who came out to his shop and donated blood to Virginia Blood Services (VBS) in anticipation of unprecedented need.

Would people come out? Would they be motivated by a free oil change to donate their time and blood to a worthy cause?

Nearly two decades later, Mr. Smith's blood drives — now held five times a year at each of his four Midas of Richmond locations — supply 2.5 percent of the blood supply for Central Virginia.

His continuing charitable work with VBS — he recently began offering a coupon for a free tire to those who donate platelets to the organization — certainly provided enough of a resume of his philanthropic endeavors for an independent panel to name Mr. Smith the 2018 winner of the Tire Business Tire Dealer Humanitarian Award.

The 25th recipient of the prestigious award, Mr. Smith received the Humanitarian medal, as well as a $2,500 donation from Tire Business to the charity of his choice, on Oct. 29 at the Tire Industry Association's (TIA) Honors awards ceremony, held at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas.

Mr. Smith credits his passion — he calls it the "power of the possible" — for the impetus behind his becoming so heavily involved in the betterment of the greater Richmond community.

"We're all in the commodity business," he said, while eating lunch at an upscale Richmond-area burger restaurant recently.

"I do oil changes. These guys serve burgers. What separates the people that do it really well from everybody else?" he asked.

"Passion."

Why is his charitable work so important to him and his wife, Patty?

"Because I can," he said. "Patty and I don't have kids. I'll never have that gift. At 55 (years old), that looks different than it did at 45 or 35 or 25.

"What I do have now is the ability to make an impact. I'm not taking anything with me. ... If we can do this and help these kids out and make a difference, let's."

It's defining your own power of possible, he said, doing whatever he can to make someone's life better, especially children.

"If you live in a world where you are told you will never amount to this, sooner or later you buy into that," he said. "I want these kids to know, you know what, you can do that.

"Yeah, you've had a (lousy) run up to today. I get that. And there's nothing I can do about that. But what I can do now is show you there is a way through this. If you work hard and apply yourself and bust at it, you'll get where you want to go."

That is the same philosophy Mr. Smith has used to build his business in a market where automotive repair shops seemingly appear on every street corner.

Midas of Richmond encompasses four Virginia locations, two in Richmond (both on West Broad Street, one eight bays, the other five bays); one in Midlothian (eight bays); and one in Colonial Heights (six bays).

Together, the shops have 38 employees and do nearly $7 million in business a year, led by one of the West Broad locations, in an area called Short Pump. That store will do just under $4 million in sales this year.

Whereas the average Midas shop does $740,000 a year in sales, according to Mr. Smith, his smallest shop (Colonial Heights) does $1.1 million a year in sales.

He credits his work with nonprofits — and the $250,000 a year he spends locally on marketing, much devoted to those nonprofits — for much of his success.

"The dynamic is different (from other promotions)," he said. "You donated blood. You say, 'Here's my certificate, here's my proof, I made a difference.'

"You feel good about it because you're helping the community. It looks good on us ... so the money works."

While the average VBS blood drive garners 27 donors, Midas of Richmond blood drives attract around 400. By the end of this year, Mr. Smith's blood drives will have accounted for 23,000 pints of blood to the community.

"He's always thinking about the business and how to partner and use his voice to support his cause. And the cause is the community," Todd Cahill, executive director of VBS, said. "I can't say enough about that. If we had more Mark Smiths, we'd be in a much better place."

One Mark Smith, however, has been more than enough to elicit his share of wows across the greater Richmond community.

His charitable work extends far beyond the thousands of free oil changes and tires he's given away to blood donors in his quest to support the local blood bank.

A little more than a year after he started the blood drives, he got word that the Central Virginia Foodbank had run out of turkeys to give away for Thanksgiving. So, on a whim, he contacted the foodbank and suggested it allow him to donate a turkey to the cause in the name of every blood donor.

A green light from the executive director and 83 donated turkeys later, a robust partnership between the agency and the businessman was born. Today, Mr. Smith, a one-time board member of the agency, serves as an outspoken advocate and champion of Feed More Inc., the recently rebranded agency that handles all things food for the Richmond community.

Feed More, with a staff of nearly 100 and a volunteer force seven times that, not only collects and sells food to other agencies, community centers and churches, but it also prepares well-balanced meals to feed the needy across 34 cities and counties.

It serves both the old and young: Central Virginia's Meals on Wheels, which merged with the food bank several years ago, serves hot meals to shut-ins, while Feed More provides hot meals to school children and snacks to kids on the weekend through its backpack program.

Mr. Smith's radio spot featuring the famous three-second wow "got more attention than anything we did," said Kathryn Rawley Erhardt, planned leadership and gifts for Feed More.

According to Ms. Erhardt, more than 50,000 children within Feed More's footprint don't always get fed over the weekends, affecting their behavior, self-worth and ability to perform well in school. The backpack program serves 2,000 kids a week.

"Something like this, a bag of $5 food, can make an unbelievable impact on these children," Ms. Erhardt said.

"It's just so important. Mark has been a huge proponent of the backpack from the get-go. Through his marketing, he'sbeen really phenomenal making people aware of the need and encouraging them to donate, to actually do this."

There's not a radio spot or television advertisement that goes by, it seems, without Mr. Smith mentioning Feed More and the need it serves in the community.

"The community wouldn't know who we were without Mark because of all the advertising he does to include us," Ms. Erhardt said. "His advocacy for us — he puts his money where his mouth is. He's donated a significant amount of funds, coming out of his pocket. He not only does marketing with customers, but he also makes them aware of what we're doing and how important it is. He's also helped us partner with other nonprofits in the area.

"We wouldn't be where we are today without Mark. He's been a joy to work with."

Food, from the ground to the table, is a passion for Mr. Smith. His support of St. Joseph's Villa centers on a garden and kitchen. St. Joseph's Villa is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping more than 3,000 children and families and 1,700 more — some with severe mental and physical disabilities — through its free health clinic.

The Villa, which sits on 82 picturesque acres a few miles outside of Richmond, bills itself as the longest-running non-profit serving children in the U.S.

Faced with proposed budget cuts, the Villa was considering abandoning its popular gardening program and thus eliminating the coordinator's position.

Upon touring the facility and talking with Jenny Friar, director of development at the Villa, Mr. Smith decided he wasn't going to just donate to the Villa; instead, he committed to underwrite the administrator's salary for four years.

Today, among her countless duties, Kathryn Williams works as the Villa's garden coordinator, overseeing, instructing and nurturing the Villa's students, some with hardscrabble pasts who have never seen, not to mention eaten, a cucumber before.

Mr. Smith's commitment amounts to $100,000.

"I don't think we would have this today if it weren't for Mark," Ms. Friar said, pointing to the garden area and adjacent kitchen.

"I don't think we'd have Kathryn, because you have people who say, 'I gave to that last year. This year I want to do something else.' You say, 'I still need the same things.'

"Without Kathryn, we wouldn't have the garden. We wouldn't have been able to band-aid together a bunch of community goodwill in people to keep it functioning at such a high level. I can say that definitively."

Ms. Friar said Mr. Smith understands that help can go beyond donating paving stones and iPads and new raised beds.

"Mark said, 'What do you need.' I almostdidn't tell the truth because it's too radical to say I need a person. No one would ever do that," Ms. Friar said. "And he said, 'OK.'

"It was a real learning moment for me. Now I'm not afraid to tell people that. I try to convert my other donors and say, 'Do you want to make the biggest difference? It's the connection between people that make the difference. It's not stuff.' "

That was 1998. Three years later, the humanitarian in him was born.

Today, Mr. Smith's philanthropic endeavors with four major nonprofits — VBS, Feed More, St. Joseph's Villa and Shalom Farms — represent a significant chunk of his charitable efforts.

But by no means do they cover it all.

Mr. Smith is involved heavily in supporting education throughout the region. Not only does he donate certificates for free oil changes to be used as fundraisers for just about any athletic, booster or extracurricular club in the area that asks, he also provides complimentary education appreciation packages to teachers on the first day of each new school year.

All told, in addition to the 23,000 certificates he's distributed for free oil changes through his blood drives, he's handed out another 54,000 more to help area schools.

The military and first responders also benefit from his work. Midas of Richmond periodically delivers care packages to area fire and police departments, "just thanking them for their service," Mr. Smith said.

Over the years, he's quietly forged relationships with military personnel and their spouses.

Before being deployed on a secret mission in Iraq more than a decade ago, one of his customers asked Mr. Smith to look after his wife and young children. Mr. Smith took that a step further, looking after the automotive needs not only of the soldier's family, but also of the families of those from the area within his unit.

He continues that relationship today with several of those military families.

Who can forget the ugly riots that erupted last August near Charlottesville, Va., in the aftermath of a white nationalist rally? More than a year later, Mr. Smith takes care of the automotive needs of a widow whose husband was one of two state troopers killed in a helicopter crash while monitoring the protests from above.

And he's in high demand as a speaker, bringing his Power of the Possible message to any group, school or agency that asks him to share it. He said he talks to groups a couple of times a month.

With his business, popularity, familiarity and brand appeal both continuing to grow, Mr. Smith is nearing the point where he might consider making a commitment to another charity.

But he's torn. How many more wow moments can there be?

"Which is going to help: helping (a nonprofit such as Shalom Farms), or adding a new message, a new concept, a new partnership?

"My fear in the latter is at some point, Richmond is going to get tired of me," he said. "Should I be doing a little in a lot of places? I think I'd rather do a lot in fewer places. We'll be making the decision in December or January. I'll probably go deeper before I go broader.

"That said, if someone came to me with something compelling. Who knows? It's a fun thing to think about."