Women run the show at historic South Salem garage

Melinda Cascio and her daughter, Martha, owner-manager of South Salem Auto Care. JEFF MORRIS PHOTO

By JEFF MORRIS

On Old Oscaleta Road in South Salem sits a garage with a long history — one that now has some additional historical significance. It is, as far as we know, the only auto repair shop in the area owned and run by a woman.

Martha Cascio, the owner-manager and lead technician of South Salem Auto Care, is the daughter of the late Bruce Cascio, who had bought the business in 2017 and passed away unexpectedly in April 2024.

Martha had a passion for motors from an early age, had gone through training as a mechanic and worked in several repair shops before joining her father’s business, and Bruce had been grooming her to eventually take over. But neither of them expected her to be thrust into the role so soon.

The transition was, as you might imagine, somewhat fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. But with support from a number of sources, Martha made it through her first year. Now, she is being sought out as a role model. Working with her and her other longtime mechanics is Nina, an intern from Somers High school, who was presented with a few options for mechanic internships but, after hearing about Martha from a friend, specifically requested to work with her and asked for permission to do her internship outside the Somers district.

Martha’s mother, Melinda, is also working with her, trying to hone her own skills as a service writer and handle much of the paperwork. 

But the job of holding it all together — directing the repairs, ordering all the parts, dealing with customers, suppliers and employees and managing the business, while continuing her love of hands-on work — is an inheritance that Martha found overwhelming at first.

After attending Lincoln Tech in Mahwah, N.J., Martha got her first job at Pound Ridge Sunoco in 2015. After two years there, during which she got both her automotive and motorcycle inspector certifications, she moved to Lisi’s Towing in Brewster, which needed a motorcycle inspector. In 2020, Bruce told her he was getting older and was looking to get out, and wanted her to come and work with him.

“There was a big fight, because I didn’t want to come here right off the bat; I’d made a lot of friends in Brewster,” Martha says. “But you don’t put your nose up to a wonderful opportunity like this. I came down here in 2020 and started working with my dad. Typical family dynamic: slamming doors, yelling, screaming, late nights, and at the end of the day, ‘I love you dad.’ ‘I love you too, I’m sorry.’ There’s a lot of heart in this place; there’s a lot of love too.”

There would be more struggles as Bruce tried to teach her about the business; their styles did not always mesh. 

“In one of our fights, before all this had happened, I said, ‘If you seat me behind this desk, it’s going to be financial suicide. I know how to fix cars, but I know nothing about the administrative side.’ And of course I’d be in the middle of fixing a car, and my mind was stuck on what part I needed, and he’d say, ‘Hey, come here, I want to show you something. You’re going to need to know this at some point.’ He’d give me a tidbit of information behind the desk, and I would get frustrated with him. I’d say, ‘Dad, I’m in the middle of a job over here; what you’re telling me is going to go in one ear and out the other.’ But apparently it didn’t. Somehow it stuck. And it’s very strange, because there are certain situations where I’m sitting here, and I’ll go back on those memories and be like, ‘I remember him telling me how to do this.’ But it definitely was an incredible struggle. Fixing cars is one thing; fixing cars and then having to bill it out, get the parts, quote the customer, make sure availability is good, all these different things — it was just a lot at once.”

Bruce went into the hospital in January 2024, and between January and April, Martha was running the shop, but he was able to guide her through a lot of it by phone. Everyone expected him to return, but when Bruce passed away, Martha began to feel she was in over her head. Fortunately, others were there to guide her. She says Mike Mongiello of Cross River Shell reached out, because he had been through a similar situation after his father died. He recommended a professional coach from Elite Worldwide, which specializes in coaching and training for auto repair shop owners. After a couple of months Martha called them, and now says it was one of the best decisions she ever made, as it helped straighten out “this tangled mess I was in.” 

Melinda notes that the coaching has helped a lot, as Martha initially worried too much about whether the business would survive when there was a normal drop-off during the winter. 

“She wasn’t accustomed to the regular ebb-and-flow of business,” Melinda says. Now that they’ve gotten through the winter months and she’s gotten more comfortable in her role, Martha is handling things with a bit more aplomb. Helping her over the past year has been Felix, the cat who follows her everywhere and now has a place of honor on the counter.

The repair shop on Old Oscaleta Road began as Hoyt’s Garage, tracing its origins to when Dudley Hoyt, a dairy farmer, started repairing farm equipment, and later, cars. Fred Stingel began working there in 1955, taking over in 1968 after Dudley retired, and when Stingel retired in the early 1990s, he sold it to Jimmy O’Connor, who had begun working for him as a teenager. 

Bruce and Melinda purchased the farm property on which the garage sits, including the big farmhouse on the corner of Oscaleta and Old Oscaleta, in 1993. Tragically, O’Connor perished in a fire, and in 2017, Bruce bought the auto repair business and began running it himself. 

South Salem Auto Care became his passion; he completely renovated it and established a reputation for offering quality work at reasonable prices. That is the legacy Martha now is keeping alive. Many of the shop’s customers are women, who appreciate having repairs explained to them in plain language, without condescension — as does everybody else. Martha emphasizes that what she inherited was a “legacy of trust” — a business that treats all customers and employees fairly.

It should be noted that Martha’s connection to the business is much more visceral, and emotional, given that she grew up in the house next door. Bruce himself recounted one particular incident on the company’s website: “As I always jokingly said, Jimmy came with the house when we bought it. The first year we were here, there was no fence separating the repair shop from the house. We had a 1.5-year-old daughter, Martha, and she wandered into the shop›s parking lot on a summer’s day. Jimmy was working inside the car. Erik, his helper, was getting ready to pull a pickup truck in when Jimmy dropped everything and ran outside, screaming at the top of his lungs to stop. He scooped up Martha just as the backup lights came on. Jimmy and Martha were rolling on the ground, with Jimmy bear-hugging Martha just as the truck started to back up. Martha was 2 feet from the truck’s bumper, and Erik couldn’t see her. I saw the whole thing unfold in the blink of an eye. I owe my daughter’s life to that man.”