Linda Alverson, 64, counted her commuting options one recent rainy morning in Windham and almost came up short. Her car had died and she couldn’t afford to fix it. She contemplated walking to the Windham Liquor Store, where she works a few days a week. Instead, she texted Dawn Kojac.
“It’s a godsend,” Alverson said of Dawn 2 Dusk, Kojac’s car service which charges local workers $10 per ride in town. Over time, the two have become friends, joking during rides and talking about life in a town where “city people don’t realize we don’t stay open all night long,” Alverson said.
In Greene County’s mountaintop towns, where distances are long, cell service is unreliable, and winter weather can turn roads treacherous, transportation is less a convenience than a condition of daily life. State officials told The Overlook they are working to address those gaps. The New York State Department of Transportation is leading a comprehensive study of transit needs across the Hudson Valley, including Ulster, Dutchess and neighboring counties, aimed at improving local service, intercounty connections and access to major destinations in the New York City metropolitan area.
The few public and private alternatives are subject to limits on routes and timing and can be suspended during emergencies or bad weather. Even that fragile system depends on connectivity—and when that goes down, as it did when Verizon experienced a widespread outage on Wednesday, residents have few options.
The reality is that if you don’t own or lease a car, transportation often depends on who’s available, who can drive in snow, and who answers the phone. That’s where Kojac comes in.
“There was a need,” she said.
Kojac, 55, started her business in 2020 after trying and failing to make Uber work in Windham. She has a Chevrolet Suburban, a Nissan Murano and a third vehicle that is currently out of service.
“We could not get the app to work up here,” she said, as riders would request a car, receive confirmation, and then watch in dismay as it was canceled. “There are physically no drivers up here.”
Kojac lives in downtown Windham and does much of the work herself, driving and dispatching at the same time.
“Everything goes through my cell phone,” she said. “I drive and I dispatch.”
Kojac will sometimes listen to podcasts about psychology and The Shawn Ryan Show, a top podcast in the conservative media space that features long form interviews with veterans. She coordinates pickups across the mountaintop—to work, to grocery stores, to doctors’ appointments, to train stations and to airports an hour or more away.
What doesn’t work in the mountains, she said, is the on-demand mindset imported from the big city.
“When you’re down in the city, you can order a cab. It’ll be there in less than five minutes,” Kojac said. “Well, everything up here is like 15, 20 minutes. So it takes time to get places. And some people just don’t have the patience.”
That impatience can turn dangerous in winter.
“If we get a state of emergency with an ice storm, we wind up having to go into emergency mode, meaning we can get people home, but we can’t take them out,” she said. “Some of the people from the city don’t understand that, because we have hills and we have mountains, and we have treacherous roads that we drive on.”
When Uber drivers do appear, Kojac said, they are often unprepared.
“They dropped somebody off in a no-data zone, and they don’t have cell service, so they can’t set their maps to get back out,” she said. “So they get stuck in the mountains at night when it’s dark.”
It isn’t cheap. Insurance for three cars runs $22,000 a year. Gas, maintenance and car parts have tripled in price, eating into already thin margins. Each vehicle racks up between 80,000 and 120,000 miles a year.
Still, Kojac has resisted raising prices.
“I know people are struggling up here,” she said. “We want to encourage people to keep working and not lose their jobs because they can’t afford to get there.”
Emily Cercone, who grew up in Windham, said Kojac offered her a driving gig after she lost her job during the pandemic. One of her regular passengers was an older woman who needed rides to Poughkeepsie for eye appointments. Over time, they became friends, sharing coffee and music during the long drives.
“Dawn was her only person here,” Cercone said, describing Kojac as “the glue of the town,” someone who understands vulnerability because she imagines herself in the passenger seat.
Kat Quinonez, general manager of Wylder Windham, said the car service has become integral to the town’s hospitality industry. The resort has hosted more than 80 weddings and hundreds of corporate retreats, including events for Fortune 500 companies, since it opened three years ago.
“Dawn to Dusk has been a big assistance not only with our corporate off-sites and wedding but our transient guests and a big need in our town of Windham,” Quinonez said.
Kojac is struggling to expand. Insurance regulations require drivers to be at least 25, with clean records and be able to drive confidently in ice and snow.
“It’s very hard to find drivers,” she said. “We’re short-staffed.”
Around town, Kojac said, she’s known as the “queen of Windham.” She even keeps a tiara in the car that passengers can wear during their ride.
“They have to return it,” Kojac said.
Still, her phone keeps buzzing.
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.