Published: Sunday, February 13, 2005
By Nathan Welton
The Tribune

Giving is easy -- you just open your closet, your wallet, your heart.

That's what Cole Bradley and his father thought when the 9-year-old Los Ranchos Elementary School student came up with the idea of collecting shoes in San Luis Obispo and giving them away in poverty-stricken Nicaragua, where children must own shoes to attend school.

Last spring, Cole gathered up 70 pairs from classmates. He took them back to Costa Rica over the summer, where his father, Craig Cowan, a San Luis Obispo man who owns a communications company, has a vacation condo.

Cowan and Cole then drove to Granada, a small colonial city on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, and started giving them away to children on the street. When Cole had finished handing out all the donated shoes, he removed his own pair and gave those away, too.

Then the two set their sights on helping 800 children at a Granada orphanage. Back in San Luis Obispo, Cole and his friends organized another drive, hoping to get the shoes to the Nicaraguan orphans in time for Christmas.

When word of the drive got out, schoolchildren around San Luis Obispo County dug into their closets for shoes. A collection barrel at Vons in San Luis Obispo's Marigold Center netted 55 pairs a day while church groups bought scores of new ones to donate.

When the drive ended in early November, the 5,000 pairs filled 24 shoulder-high containers and weighed 10,000 pounds.

The generosity of local residents overwhelmed Cowan and Cole's simple plan.

Originally, Cowan was going to truck the shoes to Florida and ship them to Nicaragua, the most direct route -- but sending them across the country had become too expensive. The shoes would have to sail out of Long Beach and past Nicaragua, through the Panama Canal, switch boats, and then travel up the Caribbean coast to Costa Rica. From there, Cowan and Cole would pick up the cargo and drive it overland to Nicaragua for Christmas.

As soon as the donation left Long Beach in early December, however, the plan began to fall apart.

The shoes were delayed in the Pacific. They missed the boat transfer in Panama. They couldn't dock in Costa Rica because a cruise ship was occupying the harbor. After they were finally unloaded, customs officials went on vacation, leaving the shoes to languish for a week in a warehouse.

Cowan and Cole had flown to Costa Rica to receive the shipment, but Christmas arrived, then New Year's. A disappointed Cole flew back to resume school.

On Jan. 4, Cowan finally wrangled the shoes from Costa Rican customs and hired a company to truck them to his condo. There he handed off 1,000 pairs to a regional nonprofit agency, and then he prepared to head north to Nicaragua to give away the rest.