Pure Luxury Transportation

The Pure Luxury management team (L to R): Reservations Manager Shannon Bergman, Director of Operations John Byers, Fleet Manager Eddie Salinas, President Gary Buffo, COO Jennifer Buffo, Accounting Manager Tricia Rivera, Chauffeur Manager Scott Taylor, Human Resource Manager Debbie Hawkins, and Affiliate Manager Gina Rodriguez-Gross However, having all those eggs in so few baskets spelled trouble. On September 10, 2001, Pure Luxury was preparing for its busiest week in company history with every person on staff anticipating long days. "We didn't even have everything covered-we were still calling companies for vehicles," Buffo recalls. "Then around 6:00 a.m. on 9/11, I get a call from my dad asking if I was watching the news. I turned it on just in time to see the second plane hitting the tower. We had a large group in New York City that day. I went to the office and literally paced back and forth." Buffo recalls probably his best dispatcher ever, Mike Nohgli, fielding a barrage of calls that day, mostly all cancellations. "I didn't know what to do. I paced for 13 hours. In one day, 85 percent of our business was gone," he says. "I started thinking, all my friends are cops, maybe I should just become one." He had to admit that his business might not survive. "I didn't realize at the time that the makeup of our business was a disaster. It made for a perfect storm-tourists were gone, the dot-com bubble burst, the banking fiasco. I could have lost 99 percent overnight," he says. So, he signed up for the police academy and worked full-time for the Petaluma Police Department from 2002 to 2008, while his wife Jennifer took to the helm of Pure Luxury. "We were out there selling business ­everywhere. By 2001, we were at 60-plus vehicles. We had been experiencing exponential growth year over year.