10-4 Magazine January 2025

to Chandler Ready Mix, where he worked as a mechanic for two years. When Industrial Fleet Repair made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, he went back there for two more years, before opening his own shop – Kent’s Diesel Works in Mesa, AZ – in 1997. Today, he still owns and operates that business. How he came to open his own shop is an interesting story. One of his longtime customers, Jerry Lilly of Trio Forest Products, decided it was time for Kent to have his own place. So, on his own, he found a space and rented it for Kent, just to get him star ted. Kent left his job on a Friday, moved into the new shop on Saturday, and then opened up for business on Monday morning. By Monday afternoon he was doing his first overhaul and hasn’t stopped since. It was just Kent and one mechanic for a few years, then he grew to five, until 2021, when everything changed. In June of 2021, after visiting a friend at a nearby rehabilitation center, Kent and his wife Jonetta got sick, and a few days later, after taking a test, Jonetta confirmed that she had covid. About ten days later, Jonetta had so much trouble breathing, Kent took her to the hospital, and they admitted her. He went home that night, and then star ted feeling worse, too. Around 2:30 AM, his breathing had become so difficult, not wanting to wake up anyone in the house, he decided to drive himself to the hospital. He doesn’t remember much of the 30-mile drive, but he does remember parking his pickup truck and going inside once he got there. That’s about the last thing he really remembers. His wife ended up being in the hospital for seven days, but then she got better and went home. Kent, on the other hand, spent the next four months there, fighting for his life. As his condition worsened, they eventually put him in a medically induced coma, and then put him on a ventilator. In a more lucid moment before being put in the coma, he wrote a list of things for his family to sell – he thought he was going to die, and didn’t want to burden them with a bunch of stuff to deal with. Many of his old trucks, ongoing projects, and “toys” were sold during that time. He barely remembers even making this list! The plan was to have him on the ventilator for two weeks, stop all his medications, and then wake him up. Then, if he was strong enough, take him off the ventilator. Well, things didn’t quite go that smoothly. After two weeks, they stopped giving him all his medications, but he didn’t wake up. Another week passed, and he was still not awake. At this point, the doctors began advising Jonetta to go home, talk to family, and then say their goodbyes before “pulling the plug” on Kent’s ventilator, which was keeping him alive. She was told that Kent’s kidneys were failing, his hear t was no good, he was brain dead, and even if he did somehow survive all this, he would never be the same and probably need to live in an acute care facility (at $30,000 a month). Needless to say, she was freaking out and very scared. Before she left that day, out of just pure frustration, she jumped on Kent’s chest as he lay in his hospital bed, forced open his eyes with her fingers, and hollered, “Kent Swapp, I need you to wake up! I do not want to make this call. I need your help!!” The next morning, when she walked into his room, his eyes were open, and he was awake. He was still on the ventilator, and basically paralyzed, so he couldn’t talk or move, but he was back. However, he was still not able to breath on his own, and the doctors were not being optimistic about his prognosis. But the nurses were great. Taking advice from a nurse, Jonetta had the ventilator removed and then had them do a tracheotomy on Kent (they put a surgical hole in his windpipe to help him breathe). One of the doctors was very upset with Jonetta, saying it was a waste of time and money, and she should 10-4 Magazine / January 2025 11