Hyundai directs money toward testing centers

When the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. in March, Hyundai Motor America reached out to its South Korean headquarters to decide how to help. The company settled on funding what had been a gamechanger in South Korea's coronavirus response — drive-through testing centers.

In the U.S. the company has donated $4.4 million to testing centers so far. In addition, of the more than 545,000 tests administered at the centers as of July 6, Hyundai donated 65,000. They are reserved for pediatric cancer patients and people displaying COVID-19 symptoms,

Hope On Wheels, Hyundai's pediatric cancer nonprofit spearheading this initiative, supports 23 centers across the United States primarily at children's hospitals in hard-hit cities such as Detroit and Los Angeles.

In some cases, testing struck a personal note. On June 25, Zafar Brooks, Hyundai's director of corporate social responsibility and diversity and inclusion, received an email from Leslie Payne, director of corporate and foundation relations at UT Health San Antonio. Payne said that the hospital had tested thousands of people at its drive-through center — including her son.

"Even though my son is 19 years old and a big, strong guy, he was nervous," she wrote. She added that she and her son were put at ease by the nurse, who "was everything you would hope that a nurse conducting a COVID-19 test would be."

"How easy would it be after doing this for months now to approach the next car, the next patient as just … well, the next car and patient?" she wrote. "That wasn't how we were made to feel at all."

Brooks said that Payne's story choked him up. He added that in his 34 years in the auto industry, this is the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that he has seen the industry come together in such a way "to answer the bell."

"I'm proud to know that the industry I work in said, yeah, you can count on us, America," he said.