Judy Bolster was a kid in the 1960s when her father moved his family from Pennsylvania to Western Massachusetts.
“I wasn’t a happy camper. I didn’t want to leave Pennsylvania,” Bolster told the website MassLive.
Fast forward several years and Bolster went on to attend college and travel the country, spending time in states including California, Arizona, South Carolina and Florida. It was in Florida that she was introduced by a mutual friend to Alan Shapiro, a local businessman, whom she went on to marry.
The couple took a big chance in September 2009, buying the former Monaco Coach Factory Service Center in Wildwood, Fla. Their investment saved at least 50 jobs, Alan Shapiro told the website, mostly those of RV technicians who had been trained by the recently bankrupt Monaco Coach Corp., once the largest producer of diesel-powered motorhomes in the United States.
“The first year was hard,” Judy Shapiro said, because they had to reorganize a failed business. For two years, the Shapiros lived in their own motorhome on the property and oversaw a turnaround. “The second and subsequent years have been good,” she said.
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