A love story that started in a Thousand Oaks emergency room, starring a beat-up red 1969 Land Rover that broke down on a remote island near Seattle, soon will be coming to a television screen near you.

It may sound like a bizarre mash-up, but that's the basic ingredient list for an episode of "NASCAR Angels," a nationally syndicated TV program that sent a camera crew Thursday to Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center.

The show each week tells the story of a hardworking good Samaritan and that person's broken car, and then sets loose NASCAR-sponsored mechanics on the vehicle to perform a grand makeover.

The story in Thousand Oaks is about Dr. Darrell L. Davey, a prominent emergency room physician who died when he had to ditch his airplane in the cold waters of Puget Sound in 2005. Davey was one of the first emergency room doctors at Los Robles, where he worked for 30 years, and where his wife, Debbie, continues working as a nurse.

But at their summer cabin on Blakely Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound, he was known for the battered, reliable old red Land Rover he used as an ambulance to rescue neighbors, pets and tourists.

The car is broken, and that's why the TV cameras came to Los Robles.

"It's a love story, but it has cars and race drivers," said show producer Shana Fischer.

The three-person video crew shadowed Los Robles emergency room triage nurse Debbie Davey on Thursday. This weekend, she'll attend the NASCAR Busch Cup race at California Speedway before she and the TV cameras head to the big unveiling of the Rover they call "Red" on Sunday on the island.

The TV show producers have some on-camera surprises for her up there but swore people at the hospital to secrecy.

Dr. Davey had originally spotted the car in Ventura two decades ago, and after rehabilitating it with the help of Debbie, commuted in it from Camarillo up the Conejo Grade for 10 years.

"Eventually, it got kind of tired, and we brought it to the island 10 years ago," she said.

During its island exile, no mechanic other than the doctor could look after it.

The doctor and his nurse-wife were the only medical help on the island during the busy summer season for more than a decade.

But the veteran flying pilot died in 2005 while taking a person to the mainland, when his seaplane was forced to make a landing in rough water, and took on water.

Debbie Davey would like to continue using "Red" to help people in need, but its clutch went out and other parts failed, so she turned to "NASCAR Angels" to get "Red" fixed.

Mechanics from the show's sponsor, Goodyear-Gemini, have meticulously restored the Rover and will unveil it to Davey and her children Sunday.

"I haven't seen the car yet, but I am so grateful," she said. "I want to continue helping up there. We've transported ATV accident victims (with) broken legs, and we really need four-wheel-drive up there to get around."

Her late husband's name has been enshrined on the wall outside the emergency room at Los Robles, something that current emergency room Dr. Richard Midthun said "would probably mortify" his former partner in practice.

"Darrell was a very strong individual, a product of the West, a John Wayne kind of guy," he told the NASCAR video crew. "Both of his kids want to go into medicine."

Davey said the restoration of "Red" will allow her and her son, Torin, 21, and daughter, Genevieve, 17, to continue to help people on the island. The three still spend summers there, returning to Camarillo for school and work.

The TV show, hosted by ESPN's Rusty Wallace, will air later this year on KABC, Channel 7, and on cable station WGN.