Suzanne Woodling grabs a men’s pair of shoes to give to a homeless individual in Downtown Dallas on Christmas Eve. Photography by Kelsey Shoemaker
For 15 years, Lakewood resident Ken Troupe has been collecting thousands, 15,000 to be exact, pairs of shoes from all over the metroplex to be donated to homeless people.
Troupe collects shoes year-round, but during a one-month mission each December, he begins every day by loading up his silver Jeep with over 100 shoe pairs, from a size 8.5 women’s pink tennis shoe to a size 11.5 men’s gray tennis shoe. Then, he’s ready for his drive around Dallas.
This season was his most successful shoe collection yet, with almost 2,000 pairs of shoes, surpassing Troupe’s original goal of 1,000 shoe pairs collected.
It’s been a good run these past few years, but the start of Lakewood’s Shoe Guy wasn’t always this organized.
On Dec. 1, 2008, Lakewood resident Ken Troupe was lying in bed listening to the radio when a segment discussing “the true meaning of Christmas” caught his attention.
Troupe lay there pondering the question of what the time of year really meant.
After a moment of reflection, he had an “aha moment.”
“I have all these old shoes, I bet I can ask my friends to donate shoes and I can try to collect 100 pairs of shoes and give them out,” he says.
He started by emailing the Park Cities running group. Troupe received 250 pairs of shoes that first year.
It was as simple as that, he says. So a new holiday tradition had begun.
Ken Troupe, the Shoe Guy, donates 15,000 pairs of shoes to homeless individuals downtown. Photography by Kelsey Shoemaker
From Oct. 1 to late January, Troupe began collecting shoes and broadcasting the shoe drive through Facebook, Dallas running groups, neighbors and local organizations to see if anyone has shoes or socks to donate.
The support was not what he had expected in his first year.
With a garage flooded with men’s and women’s shoes of all sizes, his dream was now a reality.
Troupe grabbed his backpack and stuffed it with shoes, hopped on his bike, and rode from his home on La Vista to downtown Dallas, looking for people to help.
“I must have put 10 or 12 pairs of shoes in this backpack and just went down there riding around not really knowing what I was doing or where I was going,” he says. “And then, they just started calling me the Shoe Guy.”
Giving out shoes and developing relationships with homeless people gave him a sense of purpose, he says. It was unlike any other satisfaction he could have gained from his time working in sales for Texas Rangers, or teaching business at Southern Methodist University.
As he wrapped up his first year of being the Shoe Guy, he was asked: “Are you going to do that again?”
With hundreds of shoe donations sitting in his garage, and a growing homeless population, Troupe was ready for year two, but he was going to need help.
So in 2009, Suzanne Woodling came into the picture as the Shoe Gal in Dallas.
Woodling, who Troupe met in 1998 while managing tickets for the Texas Rangers, says she called Troupe to complain about her tickets. Strangely enough, the two got to talking, hit it off and have been best friends since.
Since joining the Shoe Guy for his holiday drives, Woodling says the experience has been both eye-opening and humbling.
“We live in our little bubble … We are in a community where we’re very fortunate that we can wear shoes for a little while and donate when we’re done, and that’s not their experience by any stretch,” Woodling says.
There is nothing like being at the forefront of the shoe cycle, Troupe says. While the two say they could easily go to a shelter and drop off shoes, it’s just not the same as being there to see a person on the streets smile and wear the shoes.
While packaging the hundreds of sneakers, Woodling becomes choked up reminiscing over one of her most memorable moments doing this.
There were two gentlemen sitting on the steps in Downtown eating oranges, Woodling says. She asked them if they needed a pair of sneakers, one guy replying he was fine while the other said yes.
“I give him the shoes, and he’s like ‘Can I give you an orange?’” Woodling says, trying to compose herself from crying.
“He was giving me the only food that he had … for a used pair of sneakers.”
While she declined the orange, Woodling says that moment convinced her she was doing something purposeful.
“You don’t have to solve the world as a resident of Dallas, but if you could just find one way every once in a while to give back a little bit … I think the city would be a better place,” Troupe says.
It has been rewarding to create something like the Shoe Guy and the Shoe Gal to provide Dallas people with an easy avenue to give back and help homeless individuals, he says.
Muhammad, one of the individuals who received a pair of shoes from the Shoe Gal, calls Woodling a “blessing,” as the two of them share a laugh over their newfound relationship next to Troupe’s Jeep.
Troupe says they’re always going to donate shoes through their mobile shoe distribution. The Shoe Guy and Shoe Gal kept distributing shoes until Jan. 10, despite the holiday season being over.
For three hours a day, four days a week, the two load up the Jeep with roughly a hundred pairs of shoes crammed into the backseat of the car.
In just five minutes of being on, 10 people with and without shoes flocked to the car shouting their shoe size. They know the drill.
The Jeep then circles throughout Dallas, going anywhere from City Hall to the 7-Eleven off Main Street. And within less than an hour, the Jeep is emptied.
