Women’s Resource Center Executive Director Beth Monroe, Courtney Abud, WRC Helpline Manager Haley Noykoff, and WRC Grants, Communications and Impact Coordinator Leah Reagan with the Ford truck that was donated to a local single mom.
Need a break from the polls, the ads and the doomscrolling this week? Here’s a heart-warmer about what happens when thousands of strangers decide, in a matter of hours, to help a Main Line mom they’ve never met.
It starts with a truck nobody wanted.
Courtney Abud didn’t want it either. The Chester County mom bought a used Ford F-150 in her own name for an ex-boyfriend she was desperate to get out of her house. He’d use it to get a job and make the payments; once the loan was paid off, she’d sign over the title.
It didn’t turn out that way.
A hard road to get there
Abud, a creative director in marketing who also acts and directs in local theater, had already been through a lot. In the middle of the pandemic, her husband, a Marine Corps reservist who had served in Iraq, died by suicide. Grieving, she moved home from Texas with their 7-year-old son to be near family.
Soon after her husband’s death, one of his former co-workers in Texas reached out, and the two began a relationship. “I was just not in a good place,” Abud, 40, says. About a year and a half after she returned to Pennsylvania, he followed her and moved in. The relationship lasted several years, and she describes it as toxic: he took advantage of her financially, and being around him was “psychologically unsafe.”
When she ended it, he had no job, no apartment and no car, and her doctors were urging her to get him out of the house. So she offered to buy him a truck.
He still didn’t leave. Abud says she ultimately had to evict him, and was told she couldn’t get a protective order because he had never hit her.
Eventually he emailed to say the truck had been impounded, told her she could have it back, and cancelled his last loan payment.
“So here I am,” Abud says. “I’m stuck with the last payment and any future payments. I’m stuck with the tow and impound fees.”
Listings on Facebook Marketplace, eBay Motors and AutoTrader went nowhere. Buyers made appointments and never showed.
“Throw me a dollar in solidarity”
So the marketer and actress wrote a script and had her friend film her. She sat on the video for a week, worried her ex would retaliate, before her cousin talked her into posting it on TikTok.
She explained her situation and joked that buyers could pay $14,000 for the truck, or just throw her a dollar in solidarity.
The video racked up 1.5 million likes. People, mostly women, offered to do just that.”
Then a commenter suggested that if donations covered the loan, she should give the truck away to someone who needed it.
“I was like, that’s a fantastic idea,” Abud says. “I have no use for this truck… I certainly am not going to take other people’s generosity and use it for my own gain.”
Her GoFundMe hit $14,000 in under 24 hours. When another commenter pointed out that whoever got an older truck would need help with insurance, repairs and title fees, she raised the goal to $18,000.
Courtney Abud’s Go Fund Me raised more than $18,000, most of it in small donations from women.
Theater friends suggested local domestic violence groups. The Women’s Resource Center (WRC) in Wayne called back first, with a client who would be perfect.
The client, a mother of three, had worked with WRC for years to leave her own abusive relationship. With WRC’s help, she had just landed a new job, but she had no way to get her kids to daycare or herself to work. The truck was the missing piece.
Last week, the two women met at WRC’s office in Wayne, and Abud handed over the keys. The roughly $3,200 left over from the GoFundMe went into WRC’s Linda Rice Emergency Fund. It will cover the new owner’s insurance and repairs over the next year and help other women in crisis.
A gift that keeps giving
For two women who had both lived through abusive relationships, a used pickup truck changed everything.
One mom can now get to her new job. “I’ve just prayed and prayed and prayed,” she told Abud. The other is finally free of the last thing tying her to her ex.
“I was totally panicked,” Abud says. “And to just jokingly put it out there and have people be like, ‘Oh, I’ll help you,’ with zero hesitation, just people wanting to help another person, and being able to turn it into two blessings… I can’t even put it into words how grateful I feel.”
She isn’t particularly religious. “But there’s definitely something happening,” she says. “For me, it’s about the community and the way people come together.”
Looking back, she sees a purpose in what she endured. “I had to go through that suffering so that we both could have that experience and help each other.”
Sure, a few TikTok commenters pointed fingers, saying they would never end up in her situation because they’re “not stupid.”
Abud begs to differ.
“You don’t have to be stupid to be abused and coerced and manipulated,” she says. “That happens to women of all backgrounds and intelligence levels.”
Comments like that, she adds, keep women in abusive situations from seeking help, because they make them feel it’s their fault. “And it’s not their fault.”
As for the election, Abud says the response to her video was a welcome reminder. “It’s so divisive… and then something like this happens and you just feel like, oh my God, we all are still in it together,” she says. “Take a few seconds to give five bucks and completely change the lives of two women and their kids.”
For 50 years, the Women’s Resource Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit at 113 W. Wayne Ave. in Wayne, has helped women and girls navigate difficult life transitions through a helpline, information, referrals, counseling, legal consultations and educational programs. Visit womensresourcecenter.net. WRC’s Helpline 701-314-HELP (4357) is open Mon, Tues, Thurs. and Friday 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; Wed. 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
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