Why have I given away over 5,000 Pairs of Running Shoes?
By Ken Troupe AKA The Shoe Guy
In November 2008 I was back living in Dallas after completing my first long-term consulting project and wondering about what was next. I would be lying if I didn't say I was a little nervous about my career future and feeling a little down. I was lying in bed listening to the radio and heard something that gave me an idea. There was a guy on the radio talking about when he was younger, and he did not have a lot to his name and in the middle of the night he had a knock on his door. The knock turned out it was a young husband with his wife and baby who had a flat tire and was asking for help. The guy looked at the young couple and decided to help, so he took him to the tire store and bought him a new tire. What stuck with me was the gentleman that bought the tire mentioned that he did not have a lot of money to his name either, but it just felt like this young family needed it more and that just stuck with me.
I found myself laying there thinking about ways that I could give back and had a simple idea that turned into a yearly tradition. I do not know why I have always noticed homeless people's shoes, but for some reason I always have. As a runner, I had many pairs of shoes that were perfectly fine, but I could no longer run or workout in. And I knew all my other friends also had extra shoes. So, I got up out of bed and sent an email asking all my friends if I could have their old shoes and told them I was going to try to collect and pass out one hundred pairs of shoes before Christmas to the Dallas area homeless. I sent the email and went to bed.
The next morning at a weekly run from my local Starbucks a guy who I had seen before but did not really know, came up to me had asked if I was the guy collecting the shoes. I said yes and he gave me a pair of shoes and before I knew it and we I had more than one hundred pairs of shoes. obviously I had seen homeless people around east Dallas before, but I didn't really know where they hang out or where I can find them. So, I loaded up with as many pairs of shoes as I could on my bike and just started riding around town looking for someone that needed a pair of shoes. I ended up going out every day on my bike the 24 days leading up to Christmas and I think gave all 266 pairs of shoes that first year. It really was not as hard as I thought it was going to be to find homeless people in need and by the end of the month I would hear guys calling me out the shoe got the shoe guy is here.
So that was the basic idea that first year. Collect one hundred pairs of old running shoes from my friends and pass them out to area homeless people. But a funny thing happened the next year, sometime in October or November people started asking me if I was gonna do the shoe thing again and I said yes, and the shoe guy was born. That second year, not only did I start to have people ask if they could help, they also asked me why I was doing it. In a very similar fashion to the man buying the tire for the young couple I simply said I don't know just seems like if everybody could do something for someone less fortunate the world would be a better place.
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