PORTLAND, Oregon — He may not have any medical expertise, but Richard Jensen is the type of doctor you might eventually need.
“Just automobiles, not people,” he said with a smile.
His small shop, Affordable Car Doctor in Southeast Portland was like many businesses and has had no customers for a month. He’s crossing his fingers that as things slowly open up, people will realize the need to tune-up their vehicles. “It’s hopeful,” he said. “But I got to be willing to do whatever it takes.”
There was some good news for him early this week and some cars began to trickle into his small shop. “I’ve got two customers cars in the shop right now that we’re working on,” Richard said.
Consider it just the latest challenge for Jensen, who graduated from Tigard High School in 1989, but then, you might say the wheels fell off his future. “Drug addiction got a hold of my life 1990-1991, and what it did is it took me down a road that I had a hard time getting back from. But deep down I always had that passion for cars.”
That love for cars isn’t necessarily what drove him, wrestling was.
He wrestled at Tigard High School and also years later at Clackamas Community College after serving prison time and getting clean. He even became a national champion wrestler in 2016.
He’s now been clean for 16 years, refusing to let a pandemic take him down. “It’s taught me how to work hard. It’s taught me how to get up off the ground and dust myself off and get back in the fight,” he said.
This ‘doctor’ will be waiting when cars need fixing, but he’s had the patience to push through all along. “Hopefully we can just try to stay positive and hopeful just enough where we can get through the other side of this thing and we can come out and start moving up and forward again.”