On the season premiere of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Ellen welcomed openly gay college student Jordan Addison of Roanoke, Virginia, whose car was vandalized with anti-gay graffiti four times between March and May of this year, and auto repair shop owner Richard Henegar Jr. After hearing about the vandalism and that Jordan could not afford repairs with a student’s budget, Richard offered to fix the car free of charge, putting $10,000 worth of work behind his act of kindness. The story garnered local media attention and supportive responses from around the nation. After talking to Jordan and Richard about their story, Ellen surprised the two guests by announcing that Cover Girl would be giving each of them a check for $25,000… read full post

Virginia auto shop restores bullied student’s car

A college student has a “new” car. It’s all thanks to a Roanoke auto shop.

Jordan Addison is a student at Radford University. Between March and May of this year his car was vandalized four times. Once at his home and three times on-campus.

“The first time there were some homophobic slurs keyed into the side of it,” says Addison, “Then the second time I had dye keyed into it.”

Addison believes he was targeted because he’s gay. The homophobic slur was written across one side of this car and he tried to everything to cover it but nothing worked.

“The lowest estimate I got just to fix the damage to the doors was like $2,500 and for a college student that’s a lot of money,” says Addison.

Richard Henegar, Jr. heard what happened to Addison.

“Once I saw the vandalism that was done to it I said that’s uncalled for we’re gonna fix your car that’s the least we can do,” says Henegar.