This is a story about the internet, its power to connect humans with common interests, and its ability to empower people for good. It’s a story about technology, knowledge, and possibility. It’s a story about being in the right place at the right time, and it’s a story about increasing the potential of an entire community of young people.  

It’s also a story about people who love cars.  

One of them, Chris Steinbacher, is from Portland Oregon. He began tinkering with cars as a hobby in his backyard during his off-time from his job as a software engineer. For kicks, he started uploading videos of his journeys to YouTube, where he takes crashed cars (and the occasional boat), or a “lemon,” and repairs them to working and even sometimes racing condition.

Chris quickly gained a loyal following—turning his leisurely pastime into a full-time gig, with his channel, “B is for Build,” currently boasting upwards of 1.6 million subscribers (and counting), and a earning him a feature in The New York Times showcasing a once crashed-and-charred Lamborghini he salvaged and restored into a “DIY Supercar.”  

1 Chris, pictured in one of the many cars he’s featured on his YouTube channel.  

2 Chris Steinbacher from B is for Build, posing in front of his “DIY restored Lamborghini.” 

3 Chris, working in his shop in Portland, Oregon. 

While working on one of his projects, Chris began opening up about a personal tragedy he’d recently experienced.

He talked about his dear friend, Blanche, and how at the age of 30, she’d recently lost her life to brain cancer. Chris spoke of Blanche’s love for charity work—especially of the extensive amount of time she’d spent in Guatemala volunteering with Amigos De Santa Cruz, a charity working to improve the lives of the indigenous people of Santa Cruz, Guatemala, and its surrounding villages through support for education and sustainable economic empowerment.

A few years earlier, Blanche had even taken Chris to Guatemala to volunteer with the charity and meet the people she felt so passionately about helping.  

“Blanche taught me a lot of things in life—about smiling, and about helping people. …In fact, one of our race cars has ‘B is for Blanquita’ on it, because that’s what the people in Guatemala nicknamed her,” Chris reminisced.  

While in Santa Cruz, Chris personally witnessed the degree of difficulty young people faced in getting an education and performing tasks like doing research, or writing a paper, due to their lack of access to modern technology. Chris attributes this to Guatemala’s steep tax on electronic imports. He says a cheap, used laptop in Guatemala costs—at a minimum—$600 USD to buy, when much of the population there lives on the equivalent of roughly $2 USD a day. 

1 One of Chris’s racecars he named for Blanche, or “Blanquita,” as the Guatemalans nicknamed her. 

2 Blanche, Chris’s late beloved friend, smiling during one of her humanitarian trip in Guatemala.  

Chris wanted to support Blanche’s legacy of changing lives for the better and helping those in need.

And Amigos de Santa Cruz needed Laptops for their kids.

So Chris promised to round-up 100 laptops and donate them to the foundation in Blanche’s name and memory. Knowing of the deep connection between many car enthusiasts and the tech world, Chris turned to his YouTube audience for help. His message fell on the right ears at the right time. 

Watching from his home in Utah, Brian Waldron—a proud dad and husband, as well as the skilled IT service desk manager at Ultradent—saw an opportunity. Brian had just recently taken on the project of upgrading about 75 of Ultradent’s sales reps’ laptops, with plans to sell or recycle the used computers that were sent back to headquarters.  

Brian quickly changed his plans and got in touch with Chris. While he couldn't get 100, Brian could get 75, and Chris was elated to hear the news. Brian began the process of refurbishing the computers and shipping them to Chris in Oregon.  

A few of the refurbished laptops Ultradent, through Brian, donated to Chris at B is for Build for Amigos de Santa Cruz. 

With the laptops from Brian and Ultradent, Chris was quickly able to surpass his goal of 100 laptops, with more donations coming from other members of his YouTube audience. In the end, Chris ended up donating around 140 laptops to Amigos de Santa Cruz.  

That was just the beginning. “Having received such a phenomenal response to the initial call for donated laptops, I thought 'What if we could get even more?'” Chris says. About a year after he posted the first video asking for laptop donations, Chris posted a second request on his channel, upping his goal to collecting and donating 200 more laptops to Amigos de Santa Cruz.  

As fate would have it, that second video came at just the right time back at Ultradent’s headquarters.  

“I happened to be watching again when Chris said he wanted to try and get 200 laptops, and what do you know, I once again had just started upgrading about 50 more of our employees' computers. A few weeks later, 25 more company laptops needed upgrades, so I emailed Chris and let him know that Ultradent was good for 75 more,” Brian says, remembering the interaction with a smile.  

In the end, this isn’t just a story about cars, or even laptops. It’s about the unexpected ways our passions can intersect with our desire to make a difference. What started as a love for rebuilding wrecked cars evolved into a project that’s changing lives in a remote part of the world.