David Strahan

David Strahan grew up in Southern California, a few blocks away from Disneyland. “Four days after my high school graduation,” he relates, “I grabbed the car keys and headed north to find the brothers I’d been separated from in childhood. When our mom left our birth father, I was a latchkey kid. My new father was brutal.” Strahan moved in with his brother in Springfield, Oregon, and worked 23 years for Kingsford Charcoal, ascending the jobs ladder. He got married in the ’90s, and his wife’s son from a previous marriage was killed in Iraq in 2004. “Kingsford fought me when I went out to lower the flag,” he says, “so I quit that job and went back to school for a state electrical license. My first job was three years at Riverbend Hospital.” In addition to electrical contracts, Strahan ran storage auctions and began volunteering with local agencies, including riverbank cleanups with Willamette Riverkeeper. “I met homeless veterans living in unsanitary conditions,” he reports, “and I picked up dilapidated RVs super cheap at auctions. I restored them to livable condition for a veteran in someone’s driveway.” In 2013 he cut back on paid electrical work to fix RVs, one at a time, in his Springfield cul-de-sac. “The neighbors were very forgiving,” he notes. “I’ve lost track, but I estimate that 50 RVs went to around 60 families.” In 2020, the nonprofit Carry It Forward, devoted to serving the homeless in Lane County, offered Strahan a location in west Eugene with room for numerous vehicles, a shared office building and a name for his enterprise: Hope on Wheels. “I gained a huge advantage,” Strahan says. “Now I don’t have to deal with triage of incoming clients. It reduces my cardiac load. I recently survived a quadruple bypass. I was a one-man band with Hope on Wheels before Carry it Forward. Now I hope it can become a national model.” To learn more, visit the Hope on Wheels Facebook page.

A Note From the Publisher

Dear Readers,

The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.

That’s because of you!

Not just because of financial support (though that matters enormously), but because of the emails, notes, conversations, encouragement and ideas you shared along the way. You reminded us why this paper exists and who it’s for.

Listening to readers has always been at the heart of Eugene Weekly. This year, that meant launching our popular weekly Activist Alert column, after many of you told us there was no single, reliable place to find information about rallies, meetings and ways to get involved. You asked. We responded.

We’ve also continued to deepen the coverage that sets Eugene Weekly apart, including our in-depth reporting on local real estate development through Bricks & Mortar — digging into what’s being built, who’s behind it and how those decisions shape our community.

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