#125, Drive Toward A Parkinson’s Disease Cure

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Deb Pollack has been involved in the automotive industry for decades. She’s worked for small and large companies and several manufacturers, Ferrari to Maserati and General Motors to Mitsubishi

Pollack’s work in public relations, which the Los Angeles-based businesswoman describes as the “blending of cars and camaraderie,” has also resulted in her national philanthropic efforts with the organization she founded, Drive Toward A Cure (www.drivetowardacure.org).

In addition to currently working as the publicist for the boutique restoration house Singer Vehicle Design, Pollack advocates the ability to team cars and camaraderie to raise funds to benefit the battle against Parkinson’s Disease.

Pollack is our guest on Episode #125 of The Weekly Driver Podcast. Co-hosts Bruce Aldrich and James Raia discuss with the organization’s founder how her idea — fundraising automotive-travel events around the country — has grown, and what’s planned this year.

“Having been in the car industry for several decades — blending cars and camaraderie has always been something of second nature,” said Pollack, based in Los Angeles. “But when I lost my mom to Parkinson’s in 2006, I realized there were meaningful ways to share friendships and the emotional bonds and gratification that driving can bring to support the challenges others may face.”

The first of a diverse series of Drive Toward A Cure events this season is the organization’s inaugural ‘weekend getaway.’

Specifically, it’s The Kentucky Bourbon Trail Getaway.

As Pollack describes the weekend:

“It’s a full day of unlimited Touring Lapping at the NCM Motorsports Park before heading to Louisville. After we’ve checked into the historic Brown Hotel, we’ll hit a local ‘speakeasy’ for great food and libations, and a chance to unwind.

“Saturday will feature a relaxing day touring several hand-picked Kentucky Bourbon distilleries and three great meals. Finally, on Sunday we apply the tried-and-true Drive Toward a Cure formula of great back road driving, crossing state lines into Tennessee and changing time zones with great visits to the Bavarian Bierhaus in Nashville and the Lane Motor Museum!”

In addition to other rally-travel days, Drive Toward A Cure also recently expanded its fundraising efforts to support for those challenged by Parkinson’s Disease by establishing an all-new “Special Assistance Fund.” It will provide financial assistance to qualified applicants following extenuating circumstances, such as the recent devastating tornado in Nashville, Tennessee.

Since its inception, Drive Toward A Cure has raised more than $300,000, including contributions that provide financial assistance for research and patient programs.

For program details and this season’s schedule of events, visit: www.drivetowardacure.org

 Episode Transcript

James Raia: Welcome back to episode number 1 25 of The Weekly Driver Podcast. My name is James Raya. I’m an automotive columnist for Bay Area News Group, and I publish the website the weekly driver.com. My co-host and friend is Bruce Aldrich, and today for our 125th episode we have on a woman I met briefly a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago now at the LA Auto Show.

Her name is Deb Pollock. Pollock. I almost, I didn’t angle it. Deb Pollock, I beg your pardon. Deb Pollock is the founder and runs with her husband, I believe an organization called Drive Toward a Cure. And it’s a, from what we know about it it’s doing great things to raise money for. Parkinson’s disease, and I would venture to say almost everybody has a friend or a relative who’s been afflicted by Parkinson’s.

And so Deb is doing this great thing every year to raise money with rallies and functions across the United States and different areas. And she’s our guest today to talk all about the program she has. Welcome, Deb, to our podcast. Thank you very much for being available.

Deb Pollock: Thank you James.

Appreciate it very much. Just two quick things. I’d just love to just say yeah. I am the founder of this organization. My husband is not a part of it. I beg your pardon. He’s a supporter, but he’s not, he is not part of the whole program. My partner in Cause is a gentleman by the name of Mark Davidson, who has been with me since the beginning inception of this as well as a colleague professionally for probably 20 years.

And Mark is based in Toronto and Mark has a company called Intelligent Communications and he helps us with our branding and our website and all of the visuals that you see out there. And he’s really more my partner in cause. So I’d love to say it’s my husband, but he’s my travel husband. I guess

James Raia: that’s it.

Thanks for sitting me straight. I made an assumption there and. So thanks for filling us in. Could you give us an overview of what precipitated the organization and what’s it all about in a good general overview? Sure.

Deb Pollock: Sure. I unfortunately lost my mom to Parkinson’s in 2006 and and it was, a trying, challenging experience and I’ve been a part of the automotive community for a god awful long time, probably since the late eighties.

And. Part of my role as a publicist in automotive has been including product launches and doing things that are interactive with cars. And in 2006 I was working with Ferrari, north America and Maserati, and one of our very big friends and parts of Maserati and Ferrari was a gentleman by the name of Phil Hill, who I’m sure you’re.

Aware of,

James Raia: never heard of him. And

Deb Pollock: Phil was America’s first Formula one champion, Phil. Yes, he was Phil. Phil and his family based in Santa Monica. And are good friends of mine. And unfortunately, Phil was facing the cha, same challenges. He had Parkinson’s and when he turned 80. Through Ferrari and Maserati, we decided to ask him to come out to a a test day for the press up at Laguna Seka.

And we surprised the press by bringing out Phil for his 80th birthday celebration and bringing out a Maserati Mc 12 and his son and giving Phil, which turned out to be his final time on a racetrack. And we felt that we were the bookends of Phil’s racing career because his first. Big race was back in 1958 in Rems, in a Maserati, I think it was a two 50 GT or something.

And then we, the last drive that he was in was the Maserati Mc 12 that his son drove on the track. Yes. And when we brought him out, there was not a dry eye in the house. And it was a wonderful day for him. He was happy and it was a wonderful day for us. And unfortunately later that year, he had passed away.

And after he passed away. We took his car out to the Danville Concor and they, in turn were friends of Phil’s and they were raising money for Parkinson’s at the time. And both he and my mom were treated at the Parkinson’s Institute where they were raising money for. And so I had gotten previously fer I and Maserati involved in the charity program.

And when Phil passed away they separated. Stayed on, but we brought the mc 12 back and said, you know what, we wanna do some passenger hot laps in Phil’s name and raise some money. And so we brought that mc 12 and Derrick Hill back to Laguna Seca and we sold passenger hot laps. And I didn’t know what to charge, I thought, what do you do for something like that?

And I charge 250 bucks and in an hour and a half we raised $7,500. Fantastic. Wow. And it was. A wonderful experience. We took the car out to the track, we did the hot laps and filled my purse with money and went to the Parkinson’s Institute and said, this is all you know in Phil’s name. And I continued working with the Danville program for a number of years as a volunteer and said to them, you know what?

We’re in a really high net worth area. We’re with people that really enjoy driving cars. We should include in your weekend of car events. ’cause they did a car show and they also did a a gala dinner at the Black Hawk Museum. I said, we should do a drive. We should do something interactive to get these people out there and participating.

So we started a one day tour and it was just for lunch where you went from the Walnut Creek area up to Napa. And we chose a different winery every year and raised some money. And that went on under my domain for eight years. And people kept saying, why don’t we do a weekend?

And I never had time because I do work full time. This is really just, my volunteer efforts and I happened to be the publicist for a small. Boutique restoration house called Singer Vehicle Design. It’s a Porsche company. And so I’m busy all the time with that and I said I don’t really know that I’m gonna have the time.

And they kept asking. And then in 2016, my mom would have turned 90 and it was 10 years after she was gone. And I said, gosh, if I don’t start something official now, it’s never gonna happen. And so we started drive toward a cure. I went to. My partner in cos Mark, who I had brought over to help on the Danville program as well, and he and I had worked together for years at Ferrari and Maserati and I said, why don’t you help me with this?

And together we decided we’re gonna, we’re gonna create drive toward a cure. And it began as a, weekend multi-day rally. A program.

James Raia: Yes.

Deb Pollock: For. For enthusiasts to participate for several days for a good cause, and and to see where it would go. And so we did one to two of those a year and it was really great.

We became a 5 0 1 C3 in 2016 and I didn’t know. At that time, what more to do, but it seemed like people were interested and so we started doing them annually and then I reached out to car clubs throughout the nation and organizations and said, Hey, do you guys want to do your own one day event? And it could be on our behalf.

And a lot of Ferrari clubs and Porsche clubs have come on board throughout the country and they’ve been doing these annually for us. And some of them charge as little as, $50 a person, but it all adds up and that amount of money was extremely helpful to us because in 2018. When we had the devastating fires in California, we immediately created a California wildfire grant fund, and we took all the money that those groups had raised that year, and we opened it up to have people that had Parkinson’s apply to us if they were part of the devastating situation and needed a little bit more support with patient care.

So they were able to apply to us and we could in turn, give them some money to help them with trailers, help them with walkers, medicines, things that they needed. And so that was really a wonderful thing to do. We contribute every year for, on the research side to Michael J. Fox Foundation. We’re aligned still with the Parkinson’s Institute.

And then this past year we signed on to be part of the Parkinson’s Foundation as a beneficiary as well. And that was pretty wonderful because they have 35 different centers of excellence throughout the country. And we chose six regions where we’re having events and we have take a big amount of money that we had and divided that up between the six regions to help.

Also with patient care so that we can help and assist individuals if they need transportation to go to clinical trials, if they need housing while they’re at those trials because, once they go for trials they can get free medication and be able to continue helping themselves for patient care.

James Raia: Yes,

Deb Pollock: So my goal, while I still believe in research and do give a lot to Michael J. Fox I, I definitely wanna find avenues that can support individuals. ’cause we’re just a little organization. I’m proud of what we’ve done. Since 2016 we’ve raised more than $300,000 and we don’t have anybody on.

Staff. It’s just a few of us that are volunteers putting us together. And and it’s become, pretty well known. I have journalists that come on my trips and they’re sponsored by manufacturers to attend. So the manufacturer promotes by, by, getting a nice test, drive, a nice long test drive and their own vehicle.

And we get a journalist that’s gonna write a lovely story about us. Hopefully yes. And so we’ve, we’ve had articles in Rob Report in Auto Week and, tons of auto publications. So we’re gaining ground and people are starting to recognize what we do and why we’re doing it.

Deb,

James Raia: let me in interject here this year. When is the first event and give us some idea of different parts of the country where the events are gonna take place and what’s first on the horizon.

Deb Pollock: The next step we’ve been aligned with the NCM Motor Sports Park in Kentucky, where the National Corvette Museum is for, this will be the third year, and they are kind enough to allow us to have an open touring lap day every year.

And last year we did it and I brought out Sean Kernan, who was the gentleman who owned the original bullet, and we did a nice lunch and learn session and, people could go out on the track for different sessions and do open touring laps, and that’s a one day program. And. This year, we’re doing it again for the third year on April 3rd.

But I had some friends that had come on our program previously and they said we wanna come out to Kentucky and we wanna do that, but while we’re there, we wanna go on the bourbon trail. So I said, wait, hold that thought. Let’s create a getaway weekend. So we have a getaway weekend coming up that weekend.

After the touring laps day, we’re gonna drive down to Louisville and spend two nights in Louisville, which I know I’m pronouncing wrong.

James Raia: That’s

Deb Pollock: okay. There’s. Southern way to say it. Yes. Lewisville and

James Raia: yeah, Lewisville.

Deb Pollock: Yeah. Something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so we’re gonna be in a historic hotel.

We’re gonna have dinner at a couple speakeasies. We’ve got a motor coach taking us out on the bourbon Charles so that nobody drinks and drives. And then on Sunday we’re gonna do a nice drive back to the Nashville area and have lunch at the Bavarian beer house and do a tour of the Lane Museum.

Bruce Aldrich: That’s great.

The Lane Motor

Deb Pollock: Museum.

Bruce Aldrich: Bruce, would you like to interject something? So that’s

Deb Pollock: the first thing coming

Bruce Aldrich: up. Gotcha. Boy, that’s a killer trip there. That bourbon. Yeah that’s but I also saw, I was looking on there, like you say there you get together with clubs from all over the country and I saw one say Yeah, say in Sacramento where James and I are and it’s the local Ferrari Club and you ferrari Club, they’ve done.

Deb Pollock: For a couple years already.

Bruce Aldrich: And what have they done? For example, they don’t, is it an overnight as well or just a day?

Deb Pollock: Theirs? Theirs has not been an overnight. Theirs has been a one day program and they set up their own drives and last year they did something down near the railroad museum and the year before they went out to some wineries and it’s whatever they choose to do when they get.

Quite a large group of people, and even though it’s the Ferrari Club, they do open it up to people of other manufacturers if they’d like to participate.

Bruce Aldrich: That was a question I had, so if you’re not in the Ferrari Club, even if you had a Ferrari, you could come along.

Deb Pollock: Absolutely a hundred percent.

All of and the majority of these groups do that because they wanna help us raise money. So it’s really nice. We’ve got a Porsche Club in North Carolina that is going on there. I think this will be their third year as well. And the beginning of May, they’re going out to top Sale Island and they’re doing an overnight and also last.

Last summer, the Ferrari Club in Ohio. It was the second year that they participated for us, and they did an overnight somewhere in Ohio that was really beautiful. And we’ve got people coming on board and we’re anxious, to get as many groups as we can. And just like all of our events, we have a, a Northeast adventure coming up. It’s gonna be our first time going out there in the fall, and we’re doing a fall foliage tour, and that’s going to start in Boston area. We’re gonna register at the Lars Anderson Automotive Museum and we’ll be driving up through Vermont and New Hampshire at the height of fall Foli and spending the weekend in Lake George.

That sounds great. And so it should be beautiful. That’s gonna be in October and it. Over Columbus Day weekend.

Bruce Aldrich: Wow. And people actually can, they don’t have to drive their car out to New England from some of the, from the West Coast, for example. You can actually rent classic cars when you get back there.

Is that correct?

Deb Pollock: Yeah. They absolutely can. Haggerty’s Drive, share is a partner of ours and they’ve been a big supporter since our inception, and they usually create like a little curated collection of cars. So if people don’t wanna ship their car, there’s one alternative for them to rent a Haggerty Drive, share car, and then drive share is kind enough to give us a percentage of that as well.

That’s great. So we try to make money any anyway we can. Do

Bruce Aldrich: they also do fundraisers during the event? I don’t know, have raffle prizes or something?

Deb Pollock: We do raffles, we do auctions. If you know of any nice things they can be donated. We will certainly take them. And we aim for on the big events, we aim for experiences.

We raised a lot of money last year. McLaren has been a big supporter of that for us. They typically give us a tr to go out to the UK to be in their their factory and to do a factor, a private tour of their technology center and their design center and the manufacturing of McLaren. And then we team that with a five star hotel.

James Raia: That’s great. Wow. Hey, on a lighthearted note just, I can’t help but ask this one. I noticed a reference to. People should have fun which they do. I’m sure it’s all for the, a great cause as we know, but it’s not a competition. I think I read a reference to that. Have It’s true. Have there been moments, we have there been moments?

Deb Pollock: Fortunately for us, it people have been pretty, pretty safe and we get a really nice collection of people. We have every type of car that goes from vintage on up to luxury and exotics.

James Raia: Yes.

Deb Pollock: But. We do our own routing and we do the tulips like in the real routes. Yes. And we also to appease some of the navigators and we don’t want husbands and wives to get into arguments.

We still list the real instructions in the back for those that don’t, that aren’t as comfortable reading the tulips. But but we. Stops along the way. We have fun questions. We do what we call a special stage usually, which is in a big parking lot with conned off courses and that’s really the only competition that we do and we set it up.

So there is a time and a challenge in that and, but otherwise, it’s really just more about a scenic journey and about people having cars and camaraderie.

James Raia: That’s great. Have has the. Has it in the few years that you’ve done it has the type of people who have participated change, is it a younger crowd a full mix?

Who’s it’s really

Deb Pollock: nice. Because it’s been a, it’s been a real mix of people. We get everything from a father and son bonding trip. I had two young best younger best friends who were celebrating their 20th year of friendship and they met at our event to, to go together ’cause they live in different parts of the country.

We’ve had a lot of couples I’ve got, last year we went to Yosemite. In May and oh my gosh, we were thinking it was gonna be gorgeous. May people would go hiking when they got up there. May 18th, we got totally snowed on. It was crazy. It’s crazy. Yeah. But yeah, but it was really fun and we had returned guests.

That have been coming back to our programs and we had people from 10 different states. So it’s really starting to catch on. It’s not just, where’s the event and we can only get local people. We’ve got people coming from all over the country.

Bruce Aldrich: Was that the Ferrari guys that got snowed on? Who was that?

Who was the car club?

Deb Pollock: No, it was our trip. It was all of us. We did our southern, our California Adventure program, and we went to Yosemite. And so it was all different cars that got snow on. And in fact, the funny part was we have a couple from Sacramento that you might know.

Do you know Todd? And Todd and Wendy Wilson. He’s got the XK one 20.

James Raia: No. I should know him, but we don’t. But now we’ll, I’ll, we’ll find him actually. I hope we’ll find him.

Deb Pollock: Yeah I actually met him the first time I came up to the Ferrari the Ferrari event the club in Sacramento when they did their drive and he was there with his XK one 20 and Jaguar.

And then he wrote to me when he found out we were doing the Yosemite trip and said that he wanted to come on it. And he and his wife, are very committed to driving that top down. Oh boy, no issues. And and they, their car had a couple of breaks of along the way, and then they were able to get roadside assistance and they got taken care of, and then they finally made it up to us in Yosemite at 10 o’clock at night.

And a group of us went up to their room and brought them dinner in their room and a little candle to celebrate. That’s great. Wow. That they made it with us. And and actually Haggerty ended up giving them the Haggerty Haggerty Choice Award that year for the favorite car that was on the trip and fantastic.

And he, his car, I’ve got some photos of that car and that car covered in a little bit of snow and it, they, everybody was such good sports. It didn’t really matter. It was wonderful.

Bruce Aldrich: That was one of the first models I ever made was a. One 20 Jag. I love that car.

Deb Pollock: It’s fabulous.

James Raia: Debbie, you’ve been involved really fabulous, involved in the auto industry a very long time.

Do you have a vintage car or two of your own with your family or friends and or, and if you do what do you like to drive around in?

Deb Pollock: I have, I I bought a replica of a 57 Speedster a number of years ago. And I’d love to have had a real one, but we sent our son to USC and that’s my real 3 56.

Gotcha. It’s all invested in my son, but, but the 57 speeds is a great car. It’s become my little mascot. It’s come on, all my California rallies great. And it’s a lot of fun to drive around. And even though it’s a replica, people stop me everywhere. It’s such a happy little car.

They wanna take pictures of it. They think it’s great, and so I have that. It’s not a daily driver, but it’s a fun driver to have. And then my daily driver is a a nine 11. It’s a, an old one. I’ve got a 99 CABE. And it’s a Carra four nice car. And it’s only nice about 60. Yeah, it’s only got about 60,000 miles on it, and I’m pretty happy with it.

So no complaints.

James Raia: You’re turning heads with whatever car you drive, and I’m sure you’re a very quiet unre very private person I can tell. So I’m sure that you’re attracting attention for all kinds of reasons. Very lively and have a good personality, and you’re out there and I bet you if somebody stops to talk to you about your car is, they’re probably surprised on some level how much you knowledge you have about it.

Deb Pollock: Yeah I’ve, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve grown up in this industry and it’s been a wonderful thing because, even though we’re such a big industry, we’re really small. Everybody seems to know everybody and no matter where you work, you’ve got a common bond.

And we’re all in this together, both on the car side, and it’s the same thing I say with Parkinson’s, we’re all in this. Together where we’ve got a cause and we all can relate and we bond over different things and it’s just been wonderful. Yes. No complaints. No complaints.

I started when I was in my early twenties and it was, and it’s been a blessing for me to be in this field. It really has

James Raia: Well away from not that, and not to take it away too much, but working for those two other companies that you worked for, those are some pretty iconic manufacturers and I bet you’ve had some good.

Stories and good experiences with Ferrari as well as Maserati over the years. Did you ever own either one of those? Yeah.

Deb Pollock: No. That I never did. But I was fortunate enough to be able to drive quite a few. Yes. And and they’re wonderful. But I’ll tell you before that I also worked with Mitsubishi Motors and their good days before I went to Ferrari in their I shouldn’t say good days, in their better days.

There you go. I was gonna, when they were. When they were really, coming up in the world. And and the people that I met when I was in my early twenties that I started with there, I’m still friends with now. And we all grew up together in the industry. We all got married at the same time, at kids at the same time.

And we’re all still friends. And that’s been a really lovely part of the car industry too. You keep these connections. That’s true. And it’s been really nice.

James Raia: Deb tha thanks for being our guest today on The Weekly Driver Podcast. We’ve learned a lot in the last 25, 30 minutes.

Really appreciate it. The, could you take us through the website and how people contact you?

Deb Pollock: Sure. Please go to Drive Toward a Cure and that’s dot ORG and and you’ll find all of the information on every one of our events. You can find Drive Toward a Cure Days. If you wanted to create your own program, we would relish that and we would help you set up your own page and URL on our site and we can take registration there.

We can help you with anything. And that’s the easiest way to find us.

James Raia: Thank you for that. We’ll do our part on our end with our podcast to let the listenership know. We are, we’re on my site the weekly drive, our.com. But of course it goes to the, all the major podcast outlets that are out there.

People can find our archived now, it’ll be 125 episodes as I’ve mentioned. So we really want to thank Deb Pollock for being our guest today on The Weekly Driver Podcast. It’s a great way to raise money for ’em. As we all know, a horrible disease. And Deb, thanks again and appreciate all your help.

Thank you. And explaining what you have going on there. Thanks for the time.

Deb Pollock: Thank you, Deb. Absolutely appreciate you both. Thank you so much.

James Raia: Take care now. Bye-bye. Bye.