Sometimes the simple physics of parenting are against us – and for many, that happens when kids start afternoon activities. You can add one karate class here and one soccer practice there for one child in a week, but add another child and a couple more activities and simple math turns into complex physics – you can only be in one place at a time!
Working parents. Stay at home parents. Even parents with babysitters or nannies find themselves in the same bind. Pile on the nasty math of LA traffic and you’ve got an equation that even Stephen Hawking could not solve.
Enter HopSkipDrive. A a safe, reliable service to get your kids where they need to go. Think Uber for kids with competent, vetted drivers, and you begin to get the picture. As soon as you get the picture, we bet you’re going to be downloading the app!
Joanna McFarland, Carolyn Yashari Becher, and Janelle McGlothlin started HopSkipDrive just six months ago, and the service is gradually conquering more and more LA zip codes. They’ve migrated the service from Pasadena to Beverly Hills, and are looking to be all the way West by the end of March.
One happy Westside mom has this story to report. Kirsten Hanson-Press works as a college counselor and her clients, high-school students, are only available in the afternoons for consultation. Of course, that’s the same time that one daughter needs to be at gymnastics, and her other girl has to get to the Marina for a rowing class. She had been deeply stressed about the logistics of each afternoon until she discovered HopSkipDrive on Facebook. She says that HopSkipDrive “changed her life” and she now is using it five afternoons a week.
“I love what I do for work, and didn’t want to give it up to shuttle my kids around from 3:00-6:00 every day. Since starting with HopSkipDrive, I am literally a changed person. Their customer service is incredible, the online and mobile apps are easy to use, and the kids are completely happy with their rides – even if there are different drivers from day to day.”
Kristen loves the ease with which her HSD driver can sign a child out of school, navigate a gated community, and negotiate a crisis such as a changed bus stop. In the past, she had used UCLA students for after school driving duties, but inevitably the exigencies of college life made these students less than consistently reliable. Not to mention that not really knowing anything about the student’s background made her nervous. HopSkipDrive runs background checks (DMV, National Sex Offenders and law enforcement), vets both cars and drivers, and carries more than the required amount of insurance on all carriers.
Read HopSkipDrive’s safety statement here.
Read more about the three Founders.
This article was sponsored by our friends at HopSkipDrive.
