Elmer Carrillo has been working on cars with his daughter, Mia, since she could walk. Now they’re bringing their shared passion to a shop in Mineola.
“My whole life has revolved around cars. It’s all I’ve ever known,” said Mia, who is 19, and will be handling back-end office work as well as pitching in with mechanic duties at the shop, LI Wrap Pros and Mechanic, as the general manager. “My dad taught me everything I know,” she added, knowledge that Elmer said he gained from his stepfather.
“I’ve worked on cars all my life since I was 12,” said Elmer, who is now 42 and will be the shop’s primary mechanic. Opening his own shop had been a longtime dream, he said, adding he and his daughter have been seriously scoping out places to start their own place for the past three years.
He is excited to bring his three decades of experience, which he gained working in and managing auto body and mechanic shops in Huntington and Great Neck, to their Mineola venture. As for Mia, outside of learning from her dad, she has worked in the office at Don Joe Auto Body, one of the auto shops Elmer used to work for, and has sold Lexuses at a Great Neck dealership.
The Carrillos will offer a wide range of mechanical services, including oil changes, brake and engine replacements, and state inspections, alongside body services like vehicle customization, window tinting, and vinyl wraps. They are open every day at 133 East Jericho Turnpike from 8 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., except on Sundays, when they close at 12 p.m.
“We do a little bit of everything,” Mia said. “Essentially, anything that could go wrong in your car, we’ll fix it for you. Anything you could possibly want to change in your car, we can most likely change it.”
The pair live a short drive away in Great Neck where they are both volunteer firefighters and call Elmer’s wife, Leslie Arguta, the shop’s biggest supporter and honorary CEO.
“She keeps everyone in line and keeps the shop looking nice,” Mia said. “She’s just always there looking after us, making sure we’re on the right track, and not slowing down.”
“She’s a big driving force in the business,” Elmer added of his wife, who has been running her own cleaning business, Leslie’s Cleaning, for years. “She was my big partner in this.”
The family bought the shop from its previous owner, Steven Astkinazy, who had been running it as a shop that only did mechanic work and was looking to retire.
As for the goal with their shop, Mia said the two were working hard to provide trustworthy, fairly priced service that would change people’s perspective on mechanics.
“We hope we can turn around the stereotype that ‘all mechanics are bad’ one customer at a time,” she said. “I get that a lot, and it honestly saddens me. We want to give you a good experience. We care about your car.”
“I know, for a lot of people, their cars are their baby, or if not their baby, they’re how you get to work every day, how you feed your family,” Mia added. “I wouldn’t want to go in a store and have such a horrible experience that I’m like, ‘I think everyone else is like this.’ I’d love to change that.”
The two said they have already achieved this goal with at least one customer.
“A customer came from a BMW service dealer that was ripping him off. He came in kind of hesitant. Thought the same thing was going to happen again. But we turned around his experience,” Mia said. “Here we treat all of our customers like family, which I know is what a lot of mechanics say. But here we actually mean it,”
“We are going to welcome all customers with open arms,” she added. “Give us a call. I usually answer on the first ring,”
