A 90 year old man plowing his Volvo straight through the front of a California coffee shop on Thanksgiving night is one of those stories that makes you shake your head and thank God the place was closed, because the surveillance footage looks like something out of an action movie filmed by people who really hate pastries. The car came barreling down University Avenue in Los Gatos around 9 p.m., didn’t slow, didn’t swerve, didn’t even pretend to tap the brakes, and went full battering ram into Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company. The impact leveled half the business in seconds.
A 90-year-old man driving ~90 mph in a Volvo crashed into a Bay Area coffee shop on Thanksgiving and survived; police say alcohol may have been a factor, and the investigation is ongoing.
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 29, 2025
Owner Teri Hope said she’s devastated but grateful no one was inside. And she’s right. If this had happened during the morning rush, the headlines would be a whole lot darker. Instead, the only injury was the driver himself, who was taken to the hospital and is now in stable condition. Police haven’t released his name yet, but they did say alcohol is suspected to have played a role. Let me say that again in case anyone missed it, a 90 year old man may have been driving drunk on Thanksgiving night. California has a lot of problems, but apparently nobody is checking whether Grandpa is sneaking bourbon before a joyride.
Photos from the scene show the sedan sitting on a mound of splintered furniture, smashed counters and what used to be the shop’s front entrance. It looks like someone dropped the car from a crane. Hope said half the building’s fixtures and furniture were demolished. Locals who frequent the shop told reporters they were shaken thinking about how easily this could have turned into a mass casualty event. Regular Sheila Lebedenko put it bluntly, “So many times we’ve sat in that room that’s been devastated… you could be sitting there drinking coffee, eating pastry, watching musicians and that could just suddenly happen.”
She’s right, and that’s the part that sticks with you. California lets chaos run wild in so many areas, and even something as simple as grabbing coffee can feel like a gamble these days. When drunk drivers, vagrants, shoplifters and random street madness are all shrugged off as “big city living,” a crash like this becomes just another bizarre headline.
Despite the mess, Hope says she plans to rebuild and reopen. That kind of resilience is admirable, especially in a state that tests everyone’s patience on a daily basis. She believes they’ll be back on their feet soon, and honestly, small businesses like hers are the only reason California still has anything worth saving.
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