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Robby’s Auto Service and Repair celebrates 30 years in Poway

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After 30 years of providing the community with high-quality automotive service, Robby Jensen and his crew are still going strong.

Jensen and his wife Judie opened Robby’s Auto Service and Repair at 13919-E Poway Road in Poway on April 25, 1985 — a date Jensen remembers, because it is his wife’s birthday.

“The past 30 years have been great,” said Jensen. “I look back and think, where did all that time go?”

Prior to opening their business, the Jensens worked together at a Mobil gas station for eight years, Jensen managing and Judie doing the books from home. “I thought, I’m doing everything a business owner does,” said Jensen.

Jensen put his name in for a garage on Poway Road should it ever come up for sale, and when he received a call saying that it was available and he had only 72 hours to decide if he wanted to take it, Jensen took it immediately. “I took it then and there,” he said.

He gave two months notice to his boss at the Mobil station, but said his boss let him go immediately, probably to avoid taking any customers with him when he finally left.

Jensen ended up taking customers with him anyway. “About 75 percent of the people I dealt with (in the early days of the business) followed me from the Mobil station, where I’d worked on their cars for eight years,” said Jensen. He also took two of his co-workers, Steve Stahlman and Rick Emms, with him to his new shop. Thirty years later, both men still work for him.

“I’ve got a great crew,” said Jensen. “Good employees, we all get along really well. I take care of them and they take care of me.”

Employee loyalty is a big thing at Robby’s, where the “newest” employee, Dean Dorman, has worked for the shop for 10 years.

Jensen’s wife, Judie, still handles all the shop’s payroll and books from the couple’s Poway home. “We had young kids (when we opened the shop), so we wanted something where Judie could stay home with the kids and work from home.”

Now, the couple’s two children are grown and they are grandparents to two grandchildren, one only a week old. The couple will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in July.

“When we started, I hoped we could make it 30 years,” said Jensen. “We figured, we were young enough though that if we failed, we could start over.”

Despite some hard times, Jensen said the business has survived and is going strong. “We’ve been through some tight times, but we made it through,” he said.

The business also still gives back to the community as it has since the beginning, sponsoring local youth sports teams and more recently, the Miss Poway Scholarship Pageant. “Some girls from teams we sponsored in the ‘80s are now customers,” said Jensen. “They’ll come in and see their picture on the wall, and point out, oh, I remember her, I remember him.”

Jensen said he’s seen the center around him change over the years, though Robby’s has stayed the same. “I’ve seen all the shops in the center and around us change hands more than once,” said Jensen.

Some of the parts companies he works with plan to celebrate the business’s 30th anniversary with customer cookouts, though Jensen didn’t have definitive dates on those events yet.

Robby’s Auto Service and Repair offers everything from tune ups and computer diagnostics to engine repair and replacement, brakes, smogs, transmission repair and more. To find out more about their services or to schedule an appointment, call 858-748-6672.

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