Bikes, K-9s and kindness: Denny Offstein’s quiet crusade to better Butler
Offstein leaves behind more than a business — he leaves a legacy of giving.
The closing of Denny Offstein Auto Sales & Service marks the end of an era for one of Butler’s best-known entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
Offstein, 78, is retiring after a lifetime of buying and selling used vehicles, and performing good deeds in his community.
Although he founded his auto company in 1992, Offstein’s roots in the salvage business date back 104 years to when his grandfather settled in Butler to escape Jewish persecution in Poland.
“He bought a cart and two horses and sold rags and started a junkyard,” Offstein said. “My father kept the junkyard and bought a tow truck. I started towing and buying cars for my father’s auto wrecking company when I was 16.”
When he skipped college to start his own towing business, Offstein couldn’t have imagined that it would lead to a propensity for public service.
In the pre-dawn hours of a foggy morning in 1972, he was traveling in his truck on I-79 when he heard that a car had hit a bridge abutment. He sped to the scene, extricated the driver, who turned out to be a Pennsylvania state trooper, and extinguished a fire that was triggered by the wreck.
Offstein believes the rescue was divinely ordained. “I hardly ever talk about it,” he said, “but a spiritual being, with a halo, guided me to save the man’s life.”
That mitzvah, which earned commendations from American Legion Post 117 and Butler’s then-mayor Frank “Skip” Lefevre, would be the first of many acts of kindness Offstein has performed, including cleaning up a playground in the Island neighborhood where he lives and works.
“The playground was in deplorable condition in the 1990s,” he said. “A lot of bad things went on there. It was like grand central station for drug dealing.”
“I took out ads and spread the word and collected thousands of bikes from all over Butler County,” Offstein recalled. “I was inundated.”
Rapp’s Bicycle Center safety-checked every donated piece of equipment, he said. “We gave away more than 200 bikes a year. We made sure every kid 15 or younger got one.”
Offstein’s proudest achievement was spearheading a campaign, in 2013, to purchase and train K-9 officers for the Butler city police force.
“I had gotten to know the officers through my towing work, and I saw what they were up against dealing with crime in the playground,” said Offstein. “I’d give them license plate numbers of suspicious cars, and they made a lot of arrests.”
Offstein launched the K-9 fundraiser with a $10,000 interest-free loan, which triggered an outpouring of donations that eventually topped $100,000 — enough to buy two German shepherds and two K-9 equipped cars, he said. “I used my Yiddishe kop and asked (then) Pittsburgh police chief Nate Harper if our officers could train with his K-9 division. He said yes.”
Offstein once led a winter clothing drive that yielded 500 coats, plus mittens, gloves and scarves for those in need. “Some people don’t have a damn thing,” he said. “And I’ve always had more than I needed.”
Cantor Michele Gray-Schaffer, spiritual leader emerita of B’nai Abraham, has known Offstein for many years and said “his heart is always in the right place.
“Denny’s doing what we’re taught in the Torah. He’s so giving. He steps up to the plate.”
A former board member of B’nai Abraham, Offstein purchased carpeting and computers and helped with plantings around the shul in memory of Tree of Life congregants murdered in 2018, Gray-Schaffer said. “For the religious school there was nothing Denny wouldn’t do.”
Offstein said the decision to close his business was prompted by health issues, from which he is now recovering. Selling off the mountain of auto parts and other scrap amassed over several decades will take time. Krill Recycling of Butler has removed 60,000 pounds so far with 50,000 pounds to go.
“I’m also getting rid of my tow trucks, except for the one that can follow me to the funeral home when I die,” Offstein quipped, although he is not preparing for that to happen anytime soon, since he is looking forward to an active retirement.
With 400 bikes still in storage, it may include one more Bicycle Rodeo, he said.
Still, not working will be an adjustment, he admitted, since a nose-to-the-grindstone ethic is all he has ever known.
“I was a kid when my dad would hand me a five-gallon bucket and tell me to fill it with all the nuts, bolts and screws I could find. He’d pay me a nickel.”
“I was so young I could barely lift the bucket but when I brought it to him, he’d say, ‘Nuska full’ — not full enough. He needed it to be heaping. I had to give him extra.”
Offstein recalls also earning a nickel from his dad for every car he helped hook up to a tow truck. “I said to him one day, ‘Don’t you think I need a raise,’ and he gave me a dime.”
Widowed since 2001 and with no children, Offstein said he may now have time for a social life. “I’m a simple, quiet guy. I don’t go to bars. I don’t go out to eat,” he said. “But if I could meet a shayna maydel, I’d be in seventh heaven.” PJC
Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
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