Most people would call it a bad night if the drunken stranger they went home with forgot their name, but not Scott Vaughn. For Vaughn, one of the founders of Hero DD, it’s merely an occupational hazard.
The other night, for instance, Vaughn rode his Italian-made DiBlasi scooter to a bar, picked up a pair of revelers and drove them home in their own car with the collapsible DiBlasi folded up in the trunk. When they got to the house, though, Vaughn explains, a not entirely atypical scene proceeded to unfold. “I say, ‘So the fare is $33,’ and one [of the passengers] was more coherent, and she gives me $11, and I say, ‘Okay, I still need $22,’ and the other looks at me, really confused, and says, ‘You need to go. You need to go right now!’ She’d forgotten who I was and what the situation was.”
In the end, the more sober of the two passengers explained to the other that driving them home was Vaughn’s job. Luckily, Vaughn and partner Jamey Nelson are used to working with a slightly lubricated clientele—the pair met at Riva Fish House in Santa Cruz, where they are both bartenders. “It started from that,” Vaughn says of the professional designated driver service, “just from being around drunk people and drinking myself.”
Vaughn and Nelson launched Hero DD (that’s “Designated Driver”) at the end of October and have been doing a brisk business ever since, picking up about 10-15 fares a week. For their services, Hero charges a $12 pick-up fee and an additional $3 dollars per mile thereafter. At the moment, they will pick up and drop off anywhere from Westside Santa Cruz to Aptos, but eventually they hope to expand the fleet with service to higher elevations, like Felton and Scotts Valley, and to add additional services like post-operation pick-ups.
HERO DD operates between 8pm and 3am, Tuesday through Sunday. Fares start at $12; $3 a mile thereafter. 831.421.2429.
