"It falls apart piece by piece," says Best, 50, lucky enough to receive the car as a gift when she'd lost her job, her apartment and just about everything else. "You know what they say: Don't fix it 'til it needs it. I'm stretching it as far as I can."

Nevermind that the bus still wouldn't reach her workplace. There's always church and the store, she says, aware of other people struggling for a dime: "Everybody's life is torn."

"We want to be sure this is not a project of eight people or 12 people," [Jimmer Prieto] says. "We are privileged to have buses in Elkhart and Goshen. Only thing is that those buses aren't fulfilling the needs of the people."