Hewlett's Josh Aryeh is Batman to ill kids

To me to have that impact, I was like, I don’t know how, but I want to dedicate my life to volunteer.”

Josh Aryeh, Founder, Smile Through Cars

Every superhero has an origin story. For Spider-Man, it was the loss of his uncle Ben. For Batman, it was the loss of his parents. For Josh Aryeh, it began with his love of exotic cars.

Aryeh, 36, an entrepreneur who lives in Hewlett, grew up in a middle-class family and went to school in upscale Lawrence. Growing up, he was teased by classmates who wore high-end, branded clothing. He didn’t.

“My family was middle-class,” Aryeh said, “and children picked on me in my school for not having the things they had.” The family values he was taught focused on having a job and working hard. 

As a teenager, Aryeh was fascinated by fancy cars, and he envisioned himself as Bruce Wayne, the civilian identity of Batman, who, in the DC comic books, is known for his high-class style and owning exotic vehicles.

“When I was 16, I became friendly with people who were older and owned the cars, and I was happy to be in them,” Aryeh said. He made connections among groups of car lovers including the Classic Club Car in Manhattan and Cloud 9 Exotics in Farmingdale. He would do errands for the car owners to earn their trust, and they allowed him to drive the vehicles. Sometimes he had access to them at night or on weekends.

On a drive one night, a thought came to Aryeh’s mind: “There have to be children who battle cancer or illnesses that have the same love for these cars as I do.” So he called nearby hospitals, promoting his accessibility to exotic cars.

Aryeh’s father, Emanuel, has been ill since Josh was 12, and he lost his younger sister, Aviva, when she was 18. Aviva, whom Josh considered his best friend, came home from spring break during her first year of college in 2006, and what she thought was a bad cold was diagnosed as a staph infection. She died a week later. “I knew what it was like to be in a hospital with a loved one, hoping and praying for them to pull through,” Josh recalled.

Eventually he received a call from Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan, where a girl who was battling Stage 4 cancer wished she could ride in a Lamborghini, a car that Aryeh had access to. One day in July 2006, he pulled into the driveway of the girl’s home, and when she walked outside, he recalled, she wore the biggest smile he had ever seen. “To me, to have that impact, I was like, I don’t know how, but I want to dedicate my life to volunteer,” he said. He made it his mission to do just that, and in 2008, the nonprofit Smiles Through Cars was created.

The initial mission was simply to take people for rides in exotic cars, but it became more than that when Aryeh began dressing up as Batman. He was inspired by the story of Lenny Robinson, of Baltimore, who also drove fancy cars and visited children in hospitals dressed as Batman.

Seven years after Aryeh founded Smiles Through Cars, Robinson was on his way home from visiting a hospital when his Lamborghini broke down. The driver of another vehicle failed to see him as he got out, and hit him, and Robinson died of his injuries. After that, Aryeh began dressing up as the Caped Crusader to pay homage to Robinson’s mission.

“Despite never meeting Lenny or his family members,” Aryeh said, “I wanted to continue the vision he had so it wouldn’t die with him.”

Smiles Through Cars now has more than 10,000 volunteers across the country. Some dress up once a year, others once a month. They range from those who have known someone who was ill to the parents of children whom Aryeh and others have visited.

One volunteer, Yessenia Gomez, of  Prospect Park, New Jersey, has a daughter named Chrisbelle who was diagnosed with retinoblastoma when she was 1. “Bella,” now 6, is in remission after years of chemotherapy, and was visited by Aryeh, dressed as Batman, in her Columbia University hospital room in the early stages of her illness. Gomez, a health care worker who has seen patients fight for their lives, was blown away by the excitement when Batman and Spider-Man, another Smile Through Cars volunteer, visited.

Gomez was never a fan of dressing up before seeing Aryeh and his team at work, but now she volunteers as much as she can, dressed as Catwoman, to make a difference in children’s lives. “It’s a way to connect with the children while they’re going through a crisis,” she said.

Aryeh has not only changed the lives of many children, but has inspired Danny Tallas, of Great Neck, to be a better person. Tallas, who volunteers when he’s available, invites children to sit in his BMW. Seeing their joy gives him joy, and he understands why Aryeh does what he does.

“He really is a saint,” Tallas said. “All he does is go from one hospital to another. His name is out there, and people call him to help. His life is really dedicated to this.”