Littleton couple buys Subaru for $500 and drives home from Philadelphia during the Southwest Airlines meltdown
It may rate as one of the best stories of how people managed to get home after being stranded during the Christmas-to-New Year Southwest Airlines meltdown.
Like so many others, the dreaded word came of a Littleton couple's flight from Philadelphia to Denver being canceled.
Other flights would cost a fortune, so Steve Wilchek and his wife looked elsewhere.
"At that point, we had to figure out how to get my wife to Colorado because she works in the health care industry and she literally takes pride in being able to be here," he said. "We looked at the Greyhound, bus services, everything was unavailable because it was a trickle-down effect."
He then decided to search outside the box and went on Craigslist, finding a cheap car; a Subaru for just $500.
They bought it a new battery and windshield wipers and were all set.
So they got in the car in Philly and drove 1,600 miles to Denver.
"I had no idea what maintenance history this car had so we just trucked along," Wilchek reflected.
Through the scenic Midwest, they traveled along Interstate 70, but in Colorado, they hit that big storm after Christmas.
"Google said 28 hours to get there. We made it in about 32 because we took an hour-long nap at a truck stop," Wilchek recalled.
Finally, home at last and exhausted, they then put the Subaru up for sale and sold it at a profit (with some goodwill passed back to the man who originally sold it to the couple).
"At the end, I gave the owner back about half the purchase price as a thank you. He was a disabled gentleman and I felt it was the least I could do," Wilchek said.
There's more to the story; the Wilcheks let Southwest Airlines know about their expense of buying the car and have received a refund for it.
