Help me repay a parking garage manager

Frankly it doesn't sound to me like he was very nice at all. $3800??? Come on. All parking garages I have ever seen have a maximum charge of, say, $50. Sure they have a maximum time you can park there, and after that they have a right to tow you out, but he decided not to take that option. No one is ever going to pay $3800 for parking. Most monthly rates at garages that do do monthly are more like $200. Even mentioning the number $3800 seems like a dickish, fraudulent scare tactic. I wouldn't even give him a "thank you," personally. (I'm also not clear what you think the police or security would have done. You can't be arrested for abandoning a car. As far as I know you can't even be fined, beyond the fee for retrieving it from the impound lot. I get that the school might have looked a little askance at it, but I don't think the consequences were ever going to be as catastrophic as all that.)

I would not give him a gift of significant value out of fear it would make it look like you were paying him kickbacks for forgiving part of the fine.

While this was a better-than-awful resolution for you, consider the fact that were he to involve security or the police would've given him more work to do because of all the requisite paperwork, and follow-up and god knows what else responsibility the manager has when something goes awry. Outside of a heartfelt "thank you" and maybe those coffee and pastries you mention, I really wouldn't do anything else. The very last thing you want to do is highlight this event in anyone's memory or risk bringing it to light, and I'm sure he would agree.

I'd do two things. 1. Buy AAA for me. 2. Buy AAA for him. Really dude, that's kind of a mess. Once, a security guard pushed my dead car out of a huge trough of water in the parking lot (the water shorted everything out and I was trapped in the car.) I baked him a lemon merengue pie.

The best thing you can do is go forth and sin no more. If you've thanked him verbally, that's enough. You don't want anyone questioning his benevolence and perhaps cause him to be in trouble with his superiors for helping you and the most likely way that could happen is if you call attention to it with a present.

This is where it's nice to be a person who bakes bread.

I'm not sure, by the way, that I agree with squashing your natural instinct to make a gesture on the theory that it would have been inconvenient for him to impound your car, and therefore he acted in self-interest. I'm not sure having your car towed would have been THAT huge of a deal, and I'm sure parking people do it all the time. That seems a little bit cynical, maybe, to me. Even assuming that he let you off the hook and didn't hold you to what you owed because holding you to what you owed would have been inconvenient, you presented him with a choice between forgiving a debt you know you owed that you knowingly incurred and being inconvenienced himself. Either way, you put him out and made him deal with a problem not of his own making, and I would encourage you to go with, not against, the part of you that wants to do something to either demonstrate gratitude or apology, depending on how you want to see it. And since he's the manager, it doesn't seem likely to me that anyone is going to see you hand him a note and be in a position to get him in trouble. And if you're worried about that, just make your gesture one last phone call to say you just want to tell him again that you apologize for the inconvenience and the trouble, and you're glad it worked out and grateful for his understanding. You're wanting to make a gesture; make one. That's your humanity/generosity at work; it's a good thing.

You give him a really nice thank you now, without specifying what for, and once you have your diploma in hand, you give him a bottle of wine or gift basket. You can actually probably do the gift now -- give a Christmas basket kind of gift, though you'll both know what the gift is actually for, no one is going to get hugely suspicious about a Christmas gift.

Maybe get him pastries or a nice food gift at most but this is not something to get overwrought about, lest it start taking bribery overtones. Also, as a poor person who buys crap cars, AAA is a fantastic investment. $60/year for being able to get a free tow during the inevitable breakdown is amazing.