Business

‘It’s Pretty Incredible’: New Canaan’s Steve Gaeta Marks 30 Years Owning C&H Auto

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Town resident Steve Gaeta was just a few years out of high school in 1987, when he started working as a mechanic at the auto repair shop at 186 Main St. 

At the time, Gaeta recalled, the downtown had nine gas stations with auto repair shops, and within a few years the co-owners of the New Canaan Chevron, located near the corner of Main and Maple Streets, in the shadow of then-recently demolished Center School—Charlie and Hank had renamed it ‘C&H Auto’ after themselves—decided to sell. “These guys were probably my age and they were looking for an opportunity to move on,” recalled Gaeta, a New Canaan firefighter who has lived here since the late-1980s and whose daughter graduated from New Canaan High School last year. “We took that opportunity, bought it.”

That was 30 years ago. “It’s pretty incredible,” Gaeta said of the milestone. “I couldn’t be happier.

Business

‘He Is Part of the Fabric of This Town’: C&H Auto, New Canaan Bid Farewell to Leo Lopez

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Fourteen years later, C&H Automotive owner Steve Gaeta remembers clearly the day that Leo Lopez answered an ad to apply for a job at the Main Street gas station and repair shop. Lopez, an Ecuador native now 54 years old, had been in the United States just a few years when he filled out an application and returned a day or two later with 2-year-old Crystal, the youngest of his three kids, in tow. “He came back and said, ‘Sir, I really need this job,’ ” Gaeta, also a New Canaan firefighter, recalled Wednesday afternoon from the small office at C&H, a mainstay of downtown New Canaan that’s carved out a niche for superior customer service. “I hired him that day. I saw a good man that just wanted to work.