Outreach With A Wrench In Homer, Alaska

Brant "Boog" Torsen can't fix everyone's cars for cookies. Wouldn't have much of a business if he did. But he knows that when you've got a repair garage in a place like Homer, sometimes folks need a little help to make sure the town's nickname — "The End of the Road" — doesn't apply to them.

That's why Boog's done everything from "fixing engines to replacing turn signal bulbs," for nothing more than handshakes and once, a plate of double chocolate chip cookies.

"I wouldn't look it," Boog says with a pat on his oil-stained shirt, "but I can't bake worth a lick."

Nathan Rott was the 2010 recipient of The NPR/Washington Post Stone and Holt Weeks Fellowship.

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