🚗✨ This Merrick Teen's Mobile Detailing Van Turns Driveways Into Showrooms

🚨 6 Charged in One of Nassau's Biggest-Ever Gun Trafficking Busts

🏃 A Blind Kings Park Seventh Grader Chases His Running Dream

📦 $1 Billion Amazon Mega-Hub Proposed for Holbrook

You know that moment when you catch your reflection in a car hood and it's actually clear, no swirls, no haze, just glass-smooth paint staring back at you? That's the whole point at Long Island Ceramic Coatings. And here's the twist: you don't even have to leave your driveway to get it. The van shows up, fully stocked with its own water and electricity, and parks itself right in front of your house. You could be sitting by the pool while your car gets a full reset a few feet away. No waiting room, no drop-off, no hassle.

The guy behind the wheel is Joshua Lazar, and if you think you need decades in the business to run something this sharp, think again. Joshua is 18. He picked up detailing the summer after high school while working at a local auto body, and he means it when he says he mastered wet sanding and paint correction in a couple weeks flat. College lasted a semester before he decided his real education was going to happen with a buffer in his hand. He's been running his own thing since last August, and his brother, all of 15 years old, handles the website and quote responses. Two guys, one van, born and raised right here in Merrick.

This isn't a car wash, and Joshua will tell you that himself. It's a full reset, inside and out, built for people who don't want a single micro-scratch on a car they just paid for. Ceramic coating is the headline act though, the kind of job that can run 12 to 16 hours or stretch across two full days depending on what the paint needs. Joshua has detailed cars on the beach. He's parked outside office buildings so someone can walk out to a brand new car after a nine to five. If you can imagine it, the van has probably already been there.

Here's the number that should make you pick up the phone: their packages start at $175 for the basics and climb from there depending on how deep the job goes, with ceramic coating landing in the $1,000 to $1,600 range for full protection and gloss. Compare that to sitting in a shop waiting room for half your Saturday, and the convenience alone makes the case.

Booked solid most weeks, sometimes five or six jobs a day, and still growing. Joshua's got a real plan here: a physical shop within the next year or two, five to eight bays, paired with a mobile fleet that could eventually hit four or five vans on the road. This is a kid building a business the old fashioned way, one satisfied bumper at a time.

Want to see the work for yourself? Follow along and book a slot at @longislandceramiccoatings or through their site at https://liceramiccoatings.com/.

Join us in celebrating Long Island Ceramic Coatings, proof that this neighborhood grows its own talent, and that sometimes the best businesses start with a kid who just really loves cars.

If you've been hearing sirens near the Nassau-Queens border this week, here's why: Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly announced Thursday that six men are facing charges after what investigators are calling one of the largest gun trafficking cases in the DA's office history. The bust followed a 14-month joint investigation by the DA's Firearms Suppression and Intelligence Unit, Nassau County police, the ATF and the DEA.

The numbers are sobering: nearly 50 firearms seized, along with cocaine and heroin. Donnelly said some of the illegal sales happened in broad daylight, right across the street from a school. Investigators have already linked two of the recovered guns to shootings outside Nassau's jurisdiction, and believe the defendants may be tied to a Jamaica-based gang operating on both sides of the county line.

"Any single one of these nearly 50 guns had the potential to do untold damage in our neighborhoods," Donnelly said. She expects more arrests and charges as the investigation continues — so if you hear more on this one, you heard it here first (well, second, after News 12).

👉 Read more: News 12 Long Island

Grab a tissue for this one, neighbors. Kings Park Middle School seventh grader Owen Chapman told his coaches this spring that he wanted to join the track team. That would be a big deal for any kid — but Owen is blind, the result of a brain tumor doctors found when he was three years old. He wasn't asking permission so much as announcing a plan.

So coaches Liz Manly and Tom Edmundson figured out how to make it happen: a simple plastic strap, tethering coach to student, so Owen could run stride for stride with someone by his side. It wasn't easy at first — the coaches worried about him falling — but Owen was only ever worried about one thing: competing. Over eight meets this season, the trio chipped away at better and better times together.

"I hope they see this and say, well, if that boy can do it, I can do it," Owen told News 12. Kings Park's track season may be over, but we suspect this isn't the last we'll hear from this kid.

👉 Read more: News 12 Long Island

Amazon has its eye on Holbrook for what could become its largest Long Island footprint yet: a proposed $1 billion, 4.2-million-square-foot package origination center near Sunrise Highway and Beacon Drive. If it clears the approval process, it would be Amazon's tenth site on Long Island — and its first origination hub, meaning packages would ship out from here to destinations across the Northeast.

The pitch comes with real trade-offs. Amazon estimates roughly 1,000 jobs and an 18-to-24-month construction timeline, but neighbors near the proposed site are already bracing for traffic — the company projects around 300 trucks a day moving in and out. "The entrance to this place is a nightmare getting in," Mount Sinai resident Brian Honahan told News 12.

Amazon says it has submitted a traffic study to the Town of Islip as part of its application, with proposed infrastructure fixes for the corridor. The project still needs to clear federal, state and local environmental reviews before anything breaks ground — so this one's worth watching over the next few issues.

👉 Read more: News 12 Long Island

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