My Castle

As many of you may already know, America is my second home. I was born in Mosul, Iraq. My parents moved to Baghdad, Iraq when I was a few months old. My education was all done at a Catholic school. After high School, I went to Baghdad Oil Institute.  After finishing my college degree in Heavy Industrial Automotive and Engineering, I served three years in the military engineering branch. This was during the eight year Iraq-Iran war that started in 1980. I got married at the age of 23. At that time I worked in an oil refinery in Baghdad. After the oil refinery, I worked at one of the largest repair facilities for heavy trucks in the Middle East, specializing in oil and fuel transportation. I worked there till the Desert Storm War. I then took my family and ran away; we were refugees for 2 years. We lived in Jordan for a year and then Spain for another year, then finally arriving to Detroit, Michigan in 1992.  

Starting off in Detroit was very difficult and finding a job as an engineer was extremely frustrating. Although my degree proved I was an engineer, it was not from America therefore I had to go back to school and renew my education. Since I was married with two kids, I didn’t have the money or the time to go back to school. I needed to find a job and support my family. I used my knowledge and experience in automotives and got my certificate as an Auto Technician. I moved from job to job for a while, till I settled at 18 & Dequindre Shell. I worked there for 5 years and moved across the street to 18 & Dequindre BP for 6 years. I then moved to 17 & Rochester Shell, which is where I started my own business. I called my business “Fred’s Auto Service Center”. As much as I loved running my business, I knew it was too good to last. After about 4 years, the city widened Rochester and Wattles road. The gas station had to get demolished and I was out of a job and business for almost a year and a half.

I was lucky enough to have saved enough to buy a piece of land from MDOT. I made my monthly payments for almost 2 years just to get preapproved for my construction loan. I couldn’t wait for my new garage to be finally up and running. It was a dream that I would have never believe to come true. I was done with the building architect and engineering and everything was so close to being finalized, when in October of 2008, the economy fell. All construction loans were canceled including mine. All the money I had spent was gone.

I had no choice but to start looking again. I searched for a location for almost a year and a half until I found an old factory on Rochester road between 14 and 15 mile. It was vacant for almost 10 years. After giving the building more than a $100,000 in renovations, it became my garage…my castle. That’s when I decided to name my business, Automotive Castle. I wanted to start fresh and have everything top of the line. I want absolutely nothing but the best for my customers. The business has been running for 2 years now, and I love everyday of it. There are still hard times but I’m a fighter, nothing is going to stop me from making dream. I know better days are coming.

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