San Marcos, CA (special) -- This is the story of a "car mitzvah" in which seven Jews and several Gentiles came to the aid of an Israeli woman who briefly thought that her career in San Diego County as a Hebrew teacher was over even before it began.

Eti Kozakaro's story begins in her native city of Kiryat Malachi, Israel, where she always had thought of San Diego as a very special place. How could she not, when the house in which she grew up was located on a street with a most unHebrew sounding name, "San Diego Street"?

The street had been named in honor of the fact that each year Kiryat Malachi receives development funds from the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County. Furthermore, Kozakaro recalled, her townspeople who had been to San Diego always described it as a beautiful place.

So when an opportunity came up to travel to the United States, and to perhaps get a teaching job through an exchange program, Kozakaro decided instantly that San Diego was the place where she wanted to go. Arrangements were made for Kozakaro, 28, to stay with Beth Direnfeld O'Brien and her husband, Tony O'Brien, and to teach Hebrew language at the Chabad Hebrew Academy. In exchange for her room and meals, Kozakaro also would teach Hebrew to the O'Briens' two daughters, Minna-Chana, 7, and Raizel, 2. In fact, though Kozakaro's English is quite serviceable, it was agreed that the teacher would speak to the two girls only in Hebrew - the better to get them comfortable

Eti Kozakaro, left, looks in disblief at the damage caused to her car as Beth Direnfeld- O'Brien points it out to daughters Minna Chana, 7, and Raizel,  2

with the language. Some day the O'Briens would like to try living in Israel. 

Kozakaro arrived in San Diego on Friday, Aug. 27. Four days later, with the help of her host family, she purchased a used car which she needed to commute from the O'Brien home in San Marcos to the Chabad Hebrew Academy in the Scripps Ranch section of San Diego.

Two hours after purchasing the car, she drove towards the Chabad Hebrew Academy for a meeting. Confused about directions, she pulled into a gasoline station, verified the way to go, and then backed up into a gasoline pump.

The pump survived the impact just fine, but the 1990 Chevy Corsica which Kozakaro had just purchased for $5,000 was badly damaged. Its rear end was crumpled like an old tin can, and the crash also may have damaged the car's gasoline tank.

Kozakaro held her head in her hands and wondered whatever was she to do? Five thousand dollars was all the money she had brought to the United States, and now without transportation, how could she hope to keep her job? 

"I thought I am going to kill myself," Kozakaro said later. "It was a very bad feeling. It was only a few days after I came here to San Diego. And I didn't know what to do. I was very upset."

The people at the Arco gasoline station tried to comfort the anxious, bewildered Israeli who still is not certain how she backed into that pump. They gave her a soft drink; they fussed over how she was feeling; they told her not to be concerned about the minimal damage to the pump. Inconsolable, she telephoned the O'Briens to tell them what happened and to arrange to be picked up.

Direnfeld-O'Brien first suspected that the brakes had failed. But when her husband subsequently checked the brakes out, he agreed with the assessment also made by mechanics from the dealership: the brakes were fine.

Accordingly, Direnfeld-O'Brien surmised that the accident occurred because Kozakaro had been accustomed to driving a car with a stick shift, not an automatic. She remembered instructing Kozakaro a couple of times to keep her left foot on the floor of the car, and explaining to her that in an automatic car, only her right foot was needed to press either the gas pedal or the brake. What probably happened, she guessed, was that while backing her car up, Kozakaro "double-footed"; that is she pressed both the gas pedal and the brake simultaneously, causing the car to lurch backwards.

The immediate problem, of course, was to try to get the car fixed. So the next day, they looked in the Yellow Pages, intending to price the job at three or four places. The first (and as it turned out, the only) company they chose to ask for an estimate was 1-Day Paint & Body Centers at 923 Rancheros Drive in San Marcos, a short distance from the Direnfeld O'Brien home.

Walter "Boe" Szymkow, the manager, examined the car and gave the Direnfeld-O'Briens and Kozakaro the bad news: repairing the car would cost $3,500. He suggested that it might be better to simply have the insurance company declare it a loss.

Maybe so, but Direnfeld-O'Brien wasn't ready to throw in the towel. If the insurance company totalled the car out, it probably would pay only low blue book for it. But because this car had been in pristine condition -- Kozakaro had purchased it at a premium. That would mean taking a big loss.

Noting that Szymkow was wearing a large Magen David around his neck, Direnfeld-O'Brien followed him into the paint and body shop office. Was there nothing that could be done? she asked. Here was a young woman from Israel who had just spent all of her savings! Maybe some financial arrangements could be made? Maybe less work actually was needed?
 

  * * *

Was it luck, or as Kozakaro and Direnfeld-O'Brien believe, Something Higher that brought them to that outlet of 1-Day Paint & Body Centers? 

Szymkow had worked in the automobile body industry for more than 40 years, but only the last two of them had been with the present company.

"What prompted me to come to work for the company was that two years ago I read an article about the owners, the Uribe family," Szymkow said. The article had told of a child, at Christmas time, who "had wanted a car painted, so he wrote a letter to the Uribe family. What they did, they gave this child a present: they painted his mother's car, so that his mother would not be embarrassed to drive it. That really struck me: that a company of this size -- they own 34 of these shops -- actually would help someone like this once in a while."  Since last May, Szymkow has been feeling particularly benevolent -- with good reason. On his way to heart surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital in La Jolla at 10:29 a.m., May 24, "I passed away."

Walter 'Boe' Szymkow beams as Eti Kozakaro prsnts him with Israeli  metallic wall hanging

Passed away?

"When I went to the hospital, they told me that 95 percent of the left side of the heart was blocked and that I was a walking time bomb, and that I could pass away at any time," Szymkow recalled. "So what happened they were taking me from the gurney to the operating table and my heart stopped.

"I was in the operating room a long while. ... What they had to do, they actually cut my chest open and grabbed my heart and massaged it by hand for 25 minutes before they could get me on the life support system. The only thing that saved me was that one doctor down there -- Dr. Tarazi."

Szymkow learned about what happened two days after the surgery when he emerged from unconsciousness. The experience "made me realize that life is way too short and that you should try to help people as much as possible," Szymkow said.

When Direnfeld-O'Brien asked him to help Kozakaro, he thought maybe he could "follow in the footsteps of the Uribe family and do what God wants me to do." So he telephoned the company's corporate office and spoke to Rick Uribe Jr., the owner of the company. "He gave me the authority to repair the car as a gift for the lady."

Although Szymkow had a premonition that the Uribes would say yes, it was the first time that he ever asked them to let him do someone a special favor.

So now labor for the car was being donated, but where would they get the parts?

 * * * 

The Direnfeld-O'Brien family attends services at Chabad at La Costa. Additionally, Tony O'Brien, a computer engineer, takes Talmud classes with Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort, sometimes at the shul which is located in the La Costa section of Carlsbad, and sometimes at a downtown San Diego law firm where lawyers, students from Cal Western Law School, and lay persons assemble once a week to compare Talmudic teachings with American jurisprudence.

The O'Briens and Kozakaro told Rabbi Eilfort and his wife, Nehama, about everything that had happened. It was the rebbitzin who came up with the solution. She noted that her sister, Ricki Israel, the very same person who had organized the downtown Talmud classes in her capacity as president of Cal Western's Jewish Student Union, was married to Michael Moss, who loves to fix up his cars. Maybe he would know where the parts could be obtained. And so, an SOS was put out to Moss.

Moss is the kosher caterer who once owned Mosserella's, a kosher pizza restaurant near San Diego State University. While calling car-tinkering his "hobby" might be an overstatement, Moss says that as the owner of a 1976 Volvo and a 1990 Volvo, he does like to save money by getting parts from salvage yards rather than from dealers when things go wrong.

"I absolutely am mechanical," Moss said. "I like to get my hands dirty, no questions about that. A salvage yard is a fun place for me to go."

He telephoned to several yards, many of which are located on Heritage Road in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, not far from the Mexican border. At Goodyear Auto Dismantler, he located exactly what was needed. They would sell him the back half of a 1991 Chevy Corsica (for all practical purposes identical to the 1990 model) for $275.

But everyone knows a half Chevy Corsica is too big to get into the back seat or trunk of a Volvo. 

That's when Eddie Rosenberg, a San Diego State University graduate student who is training to become a teacher, came to the rescue. "Take my truck," Rosenberg told Moss, who is his neighbor at the apartment house complex adjoining Beth Jacob Congregation in the College area of San Diego. Rosenberg sometimes serves as a mashgiach for events catered in Beth Jacob's social hall.

And so it happened that Eti Kozakaro who less than a week before knew no one in San Diego, now had a whole coterie of friends who had come to her aid: Szymkow, the Uribes, the O'Briens, the Eilforts, the Israel/ Moss family, Rosenberg.

"It is amazing," said an appreciative Kozakaro. "They are not my family; they were not my friends -- although now they are going to be my friends, my new friends, for sure. But I never met them before!"

On the day that Moss brought the back half of the car to 1-Day Paint & Body Centers, Kozakaro decided to bring along something else, something she had brought from Kiryat Malachi: a metal wall hanging, fashioned by a religious man, that integrated a symbol for happiness, with the chai symbol for life, and the Birkat Ha Bayit -- the blessing for the home.

Shyly she went over to Szymkow and told him, "I want you to have this."

He accepted the gift with a broad smile.