Urgent Help for Chrystal: Single Mom in Crisis

Hi. My name is Chrystal. I am a single mother, an Uber driver, and a dance teacher. They always tell you to be careful about who you let in your car. Turns out it wasn't at all who I let into my car that I needed to worry about.

On Monday, May 12, I was out working my Uber job. It was raining pretty hard. I was sent to an address to pick up a passenger who informed me that he had put the wrong address into the Uber system as he climbed into my front seat. He then informed me that we needed to pick up his wife across the street. I pulled out of the driveway I was parked in, and his wife got into my back seat, both of them very happy to be out of the rain.

A couple of minutes into the trip, he says that his Uber app would not allow him to add a stop, but that he needed to stop by a friend's house to get a tool to work on his car. So I drove him to the house he directed me to. He gets out of the car and goes inside. After a few minutes, he comes back out and tells his wife, as he is getting into the car, that his friend does not have the tool he needs. Within seconds (he didn't even get the car door all the way closed), another man barrels out of the house, attempts to rip him out of my front seat, starts beating him, and ripping his clothes off while trying to get him back out of my car. The passenger begged me to please drive, and so I drove forward far enough to get them separated. The passenger closed the door, and I attempted to drive off, thinking the scuffle would be over. I was very wrong.

The other man jumped in his SUV and chased me down the street, whipping around me and cutting me off. He had already tried to break my window to get to the guy, and I knew if he could corner us again, he would most likely make another try. So I did the only thing I knew to do. I put the car in reverse and slowly backed away. He threw his car in reverse and chased us backward down the street we had just come up. As I said, I couldn't pull in anywhere to turn around because I knew he would block us in and attack once more. I kept backing up. He backed up until he turned around in the same road that I could not back into, and then he charged at my car with as much speed as he could pick up. After he hit us, he pulled back and went around my car and was gone. Thankfully, the lady in the back seat got on the phone with 911 the second he started chasing us backward. She was able to give them his license plate number, the kind of car it was, and an audio recording of when he slammed into us.

Needless to say, my car is done for the moment. If only the bills were. I live in KY and Uber in TN. So work has already been impacted by all the rain and flooding. Now this. I am already late on rent, my storage unit, and several other bills, and now I have no chance of being able to make them up before I lose my car and my home unless I can get a miracle. As I said before, I am a dance teacher. I volunteer at some local senior centers in KY, and I teach in a couple of bars in TN. Without my car, I cannot get to any of that. So I can't even get paid for the classes I would be doing to make a little side cash. I am stuck with absolutely no income.

I would absolutely love to find a stay-at-home job so I can be here with my young daughter over summer break. I have been putting in applications for over a month now, but it is hard to find a job with flexible hours. I have been trying to find time to start my own business, but every second of every day is spent trying to make enough money to survive. We do not have cable or internet. I only have my phone. I do not spend money on things like drinking or cigarettes, no drugs. I have just a tiny apartment, so there's no room to be out buying a bunch of unnecessary things. I only get $150 for child support, which doesn't put a dent in the expenses of caring for a child. Oftentimes that is late, causing me late fees on the bills I would have put it towards.

So here I am, no working car (not even enough to afford a rental), no way to get another paycheck in time to pay any of my bills. In a matter of weeks, my electric will be shut off because they only give you 10 days grace. I will lose my car if I can't come up with at least $800 by the 20th. Without the car, I have no way to get the money for rent, and I am desperate not to be on the street with my little girl. Please, if you can offer absolutely anything, it would for sure help.