Retired Miami car wash owner donates $20M to SWFL nonprofits

Naples philanthropist Stephen Saks, who owned car washes in Miami-Dade County for decades, has donated $20 million to Southwest Florida organizations, including $11 million to the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples. 

The gift from Saks, who will turn 95 in June, to the federation includes $1 million for the local PJ Library, which provides free books to children, according to a statement. Additional recipients of the donations are the Holocaust Museum & Cohen Educational Center; Baker Senior Center Naples, for its lunch program; Jewish National Fund; Temple Shalom, for youth programs; and Golden Paws Assistance Dogs.

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“The older one gets, the more likely their priorities change,” Saks says in the statement. “I wanted to feel a sense that my long, financially successful life would serve a higher purpose. Judaism locally would be at the forefront of my charitable giving path.”

The endowment, the release states, will allow the federation to further invest in Jewish event programming and organizational and community support for generations to come, says President and CEO Emeritus Jeffrey Feld, who was instrumental in helping secure the historic commitment before his recent retirement. Feld says the donation “is a legacy gift with an immediate impact.” 

“We have a much more vital, vibrant Jewish community because of what Steve has been able to provide,” says Feld, noting how a classroom and wing of the Nina Iser Jewish Cultural Center, the lobby of Temple Shalom next door and the overall Pine Ridge Road campus are named for Steve Saks. “Steve has constructed his philanthropy in such a way that it directly helps people build a community, to be able to come together, whether they’re coming to the temple for religious purposes or to the Iser Center for more social and cultural opportunities,”

Saks was born in 1930 in Paterson, New Jersey, to immigrant parents from Poland (his father) and France (his mother). A self-described teen troublemaker, he was sent to military school in South Carolina, remaining there not only through four years of high school but also enrolling at the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, the release states. 

At the suggestion of his father, who manufactured upholstered furniture, Saks enrolled at the Chicago College of Optometry. He earned a doctorate degree before being called to duty as an eye doctor at an evacuation hospital in Korea — the last time he would practice medicine.

In 1968 Saks, along with his wife and kids, relocated to South Florida, where Saks built his first car wash in Miami — a business that remains open, though no longer owned by the family. Entities Saks operated, according to Florida Department of State records, include Wash N Wax Inc. and Dadeland Car Wash Inc. Saks, the release states, eventually owned and operated a half-dozen car washes in Miami-Dade. 

Saks and his wife, their two adult children and three grandchildren moved to Naples in 2018.