Laguna Beach’s Jessie Rose finds another passion with shoe drives
Jessie Rose was in elementary school when she became familiar with a cause to participate in to fulfill her community service hours.
Her family lived in Colorado at the time when her mother, Kathy, had a chance encounter with a student at a gym. Kathy, a fitness instructor, saw that the student had a brochure for Soles4Souls.
Kathy got involved with the nonprofit organization, which collects new and gently used shoes and redistributes them to people in need, by holding a shoe drive and asking school parents to donate their old shoes.
She estimates that she got started with Soles4Souls about eight years ago, before the family moved to Laguna Beach. Back then, her daughter’s involvement in the process amounted to helping with packing the shoes into boxes, but there was hope that the message of good deeds would catch on.
“You kind of try to build a story, and you hope that they’re listening to that kind of thing,” Kathy said of imparting the importance of helping others to her children. She said she would speculate about where the shoes would go to assist those in need.
When it came time to do her community service hours, it was a no-brainer for Jessie how she wanted to complete them.
A multi-sport standout in cross-country and water polo at Laguna Beach High School, Jessie held her first shoe drive through Soles4Souls in her sophomore year. Over the past two years, she said that she has been able to collect more than 1,000 pairs of shoes.
Jessie has committed to the Cal women’s water polo program. Even with her future laid out in front of her, it is clear that the cause of getting shoes into the hands and onto the feet of those in need touched her heart.
Now in the middle of her third shoe drive, she hopes to surpass last year’s goal of 500 pairs collected. The deadline for shoe donations this year is Feb. 15.
The Rose family provided two Laguna Beach locations to drop off shoes for donation — 645 St. Ann’s Drive and 2925 Mountain View Drive.
“It’s not just me making a difference because I need our community to donate to make it have a big impact on the world,” Jessie said. “I think it’s a lot of people, small acts of kindness, that is creating a ripple effect to the larger end, when people receive the shoes in foreign countries and benefit from them.”
Though the period for engaging in community service to boost her college résumé has passed, Jessie said she has considered ways to remain involved in college.
“I can continue this drive when I go to Cal, too,” she said. “I was thinking of doing it with the whole team possibly, putting boxes around the school for people to donate, whether it’s one or two [pairs of] shoes, it helps make a difference.”
Kathy is happy to see that the desire to make a difference has stuck with her daughter.
“I think that part’s great, and I can’t take any credit for that,” Kathy said. “You just kind of hopefully plant those seeds and then later on, when they start to mature, hopefully they take it with them.”
Those looking to get involved with Soles4Souls can go to soles4souls.org, where they can also register to host a shoe drive of their own.
Joel Roberts, the director of operations for Soles4Souls in California, said that a large portion of the shoes collected in the state go to Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and Moldova.
“We’ve got about four different countries right now where the used shoes are going to, and what we do is we create jobs with those shoes with on-the-ground entrepreneurships who are just trying to find a sustainable way to create income for their families,” Roberts said.
“So the shoes that we collect here in the States basically will be shipped overseas to our charity partner there who knows the needs and knows the families that are going to basically get the shoes and be able to create a job with those.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
