Boy sought job to help family, but dealership gave him more

When a 14-year-old boy showed up at an Arizona dealership this spring asking for a job, he was told that the store normally doesn’t hire minors.

Josh Ozga’s persistence led Henry Brown Buick-GMC in Gilbert to not only hire him but also to raise enough money to send his family on a dream vacation. Managers learned that Ozga wanted a job to help pay the bills that had accumulated since his younger brother, Luke, was diagnosed with cancer four years ago.

“We’d moved just out of our house because we couldn’t afford it anymore and went into a two-bedroom apartment across the street,” their mother, Heather, told Fox 10 in Phoenix. Josh “left one day saying he was going to go look at cars, because he loves cars, and he came back and said he had a job interview.”

The dealership raised more than $9,000 to send Josh and his family deep-sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico and help pay the rent on their apartment. It revealed the trip to them during a scavenger hunt around the showroom.

“Their lives have been consumed with cancer,” said Chantal Appenzeller, the store’s human resources manager who organized the fundraiser. “Really, it’s just stolen a lot from them, not only materialistic things but it’s stolen some of Josh and Luke’s childhood, and it’s stolen some really great years from Heather that she could have had with her kids.”