CHARLOTTE — It was a little past 7 a.m. on a gray Wednesday morning.
Julianna Balogh proudly popped open the rear hatch of her 2018 Chevy Equinox and pointed inside. It was the kind of long, sweeping wave a gameshow hostess displays when presenting a prize. “This is my car! This is where I sleep,” she said.
“Look how much room!” Even after 30 years of living in America, settling and retiring in Dover, Ark., Balogh has barely diluted her Hungarian accent. And she’s energized, which makes her speak a little faster, blending the words into a beautiful English-Hungarian soup, all fired up about former President Donald Trump.
Story continues below Balogh, a 70-year-old retiree, spent the previous day driving that SUV to Charlotte, covering about 850 miles in a little more than 12 hours. The goal: catch Trump’s July 24 rally at Bojangles Coliseum. And not just to be there, but to make absolutely, positively sure she was seated as close to the stage as possible.
Just like the previous 50 times she's seen him. That means being at the front of the line when the doors open for general admission seating. The best way to do that? Parking outside or nearby the night before and hustling to stand in front of the venue hours before the event starts.
In Charlotte she and other initially parked in the coliseum lot before being run off. They congregated in another lot down the road for the night and returned around sun-up. They’ll spend hours in the parking lot eagerly awaiting .