Shanti Gooljar recently received a $2,000 tip.
She runs a driving school in Manhattan that caters to a high-end clientele, and works on a referral-only basis. She says she taught the descendants a few names you might recognize:
Jerry Seinfeld. Rupert Murdoch. Vera Wang. Katie Couric.
She had initially worked as a paramedic. But after two years she decided she didn't like it and went to a driving school in the Bronx. Ms. Gooljar soon realized she had found her calling.
“I just got really good at what I did,” she said. The teens she taught latched onto her unfiltered, no-nonsense style, and soon they started passing her number on to their friends. So she bought her own car and went freelance. Ms Gooljar, 62, opened her own school in 2014.
“That was ten years ago,” she says. “And now look at me.”
She owns the Empire State Driving School on the Upper West Side, which has five other instructors. Behind-the-wheel lessons cost as much as $200 an hour, and she works eight hours a day, seven days a week.
Ms. Gooljar lives in a three-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, near where she lived when she emigrated from Guyana in 1972 with her four siblings. After the birth of her sons – Philip, 43, and Michael, 38 – she and her husband, Vinny Gooljar, upgraded from a studio to a ground-floor space next to a police station, where she now lives alone. Mr Gooljar, to whom she was married for 43 years, died of a heart attack in 2022.
“After he died, my family wanted me to go to Florida – my mother is there, and my siblings,” she said. “But I'm at the age where I like the same routine.”
ON AUTOPILOT I wake up at 5am. I don't need an alarm clock; it's all in my head.
Depending on what time my first class is, I usually stop by Dunkin' for a small hot coffee with cream. I visit several of them regularly: the one in the Bronx on Webster Avenue, and the one in Harlem, just off 122nd Street. They all know me – or rather, I make myself known to them!
FIRST PICKUP I often have my first lesson at 8am. I meet the client at their home, or they come to the school in Lincoln Square. I get a lot of high school students, but also some older people. I'm currently teaching a 94 year old!
I often take people up, around and through Harlem. I don't teach in the city, especially with the congestion charges: you can't get anywhere.
BACK TO BACK At 10 a.m. I go straight to my next class. I usually do four two-hour lessons a day.
The key is to build their confidence right away. Driving in Manhattan is like driving anywhere. You have to know what you're doing. If the driver behind you honks, walk around and let him go.
I don't allow my students to argue with me because I have more experience. I had never gotten a speeding ticket in my 45 years of driving until I drove on the highway to my girlfriend's funeral in Virginia in September. The officer told me I was driving 10 miles over the speed limit – really?!
PIT-STOP Around 12:30 I grab another coffee at Dunkin' and take a bathroom break. Sometimes I eat a salad and when I get home I get something to eat. I don't eat much, but I do need my coffee!
THERAPIST HOURS When I teach these kids, I'm not only their driving instructor, I'm also their therapist. They tell me things they would never tell their mother.
One of the girls I teach now, her boyfriend broke up with her last week. She's 27. It's better they break up now than wait until they get married. She's young. She can move on. I know it's hard when you've been with someone for so long, but it's better that it happens now than later.
HEAD ON A TWIST But don't think I'm distracted! I'm so good at what I do that I can sit there and have a conversation and still take that steering wheel out of your hands, stop the car and go across all lanes to save you.
This time of year it gets dark around 4:30 PM, so my last pick-up is around 3:00 PM. When it comes to taking the test drive, I am very proud of my record. I can count on one hand the number of people who failed last year.
My last class ends around 5pm and the drive home takes about half an hour, depending on where I end up.
DINNER PLANS I often have dinner with my son Philip, who lives in Connecticut. Sometimes we go to a place on City Island – the Original Crab Shanty – and eat lobsters and crabs.
Or sometimes I cook for him at home. I can cook very well. I can cook anything. He likes beef curry. Or, if he's busy, I eat alone. If it's just me, I'll have a bowl of oatmeal for dinner, or Cream of Wheat. I like that. I am very easy to please.
WASH IT OUT I jump in the shower around seven or eight o'clock. I have always been and always will be a night shower person. Especially when it's so cold, who wants to get up at 5am and take a shower with your hair all wet?
SADDLE ON I love “Yellowstone” with Kevin Costner. I don't know what I'm going to do now that it's over. His character's daughter, Beth, she's the bomb. I would like to meet her. Maybe Kelly Reilly, who plays her, needs driving lessons – you never know!
RINSE AND REPEAT I crawl into bed between 8 and 8:30 am. When Vinny was alive, we often went places. Now I'm not going anywhere. What keeps me going is work: I get up and go to work, take a shower, come home, eat my dinner, and wake up the next morning and go again.
I'm not ready to retire yet, but I'm laying the groundwork. My son Philip is learning how to run the school: make plans, hire the right people, oversee the money, pay the bills. I am proud that I have hired good people and made such a name for the school. That's the most important thing: getting good people to work.
Early to bed I sleep at half past eight. I have to be ready at 5am for another full day of classes.
