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As EquipmentShare’s national manager of service and compliance for Site and Tooling Solutions, Joe Aucoin spends a lot of time traveling. When he’s on the road and returns to his hotel room at night, the first thing Aucoin does is open his laptop and start a video call with his wife, Amy.
Soon enough, Leo, their 1-year-old boy, toddles into view. The issues of the day melt away.
“Leo puts a smile on my face every day,” Joe said. “Every time I’m with him, I feel younger.”
About six years ago, after their daughter left for college and their son entered high school, the Aucoins started talking about becoming foster parents. It’s an incredible responsibility to temporarily care for children who have been removed from their birth families because of issues like neglect, abuse or incarceration. But for the Aucoins, the opportunity to give kids a fresh start in life was more than worth it.
Since then, they’ve opened their home in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to five children.
“It says a lot about who they are deep down as people,” EquipmentShare Vice President of Site and Tooling Solutions Grant Reviere said. “I know they get attached to these children, and if the biological parents become rehabilitated, Joe and his wife have to give the child back. That shows how selfless they are. They know it might not be a relationship they are able to keep for the long run, but they do it anyway to help the kids.”
Joe credits Amy, a stay-at-home mom, for handling most of the daily child-rearing responsibilities while he works. He is EquipmentShare’s jack-of-all-trades for maintenance matters involving Site and Tooling Solutions and manages a team of traveling technicians.
“He always wants to help people,” EquipmentShare Industrial Tooling Fleet Director Curtis Lenio said of Joe. “That’s where he gets his joy at work, knowing he’s solved a problem or helped someone.”
The desire to help applies to his personal life, as well. When Leo arrived in the Aucoins’ lives in the summer of 2025, he was just 3 days old and faced some major challenges. He had been abandoned by his birth parents and had significant medical problems that required a tracheostomy tube to breathe and a gastrostomy tube to eat.
Leo has made tremendous progress under the Aucoins’ care. He is now able to breathe on his own without a trach and is expected to have his G-tube removed in 2027.
“He’s crawling and climbing on the furniture — normal 1-year-old stuff. He just learned how to walk, so he toddles around,” Joe said. “As I get older, I want to sit down and relax, but he keeps me going. I don’t have any grandkids yet, and I love to come home to a little one.”
Leo clearly endeared himself to Joe and Amy. In July 2026, they made him a permanent family member by adopting him. They plan to continue fostering children, helping more kids in their community who need it most.
“It’s the most rewarding choice we’ve made in our life,” Joe said. “It’s always satisfying to know we did our best to give a child a good chance at life.”
— Learn more about our culture at EquipmentShare, which encourages every employee to give back to their communities in ways that are meaningful to them.
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