Mother's Day Special

Mom's working through their grief to better the world. Here's one from California.
This one is about a mom (and a dad) honoring their son's life with hope and love...

Shoes From Heart Keep Son Alive

Published: 5/7/2011

Pairs of sneakers, mostly Nikes, all size 13, line up in the closet of Lawrence Charles Vargas' bedroom.

Vargas had a lot of things going for him -- a nice three-point shot on the basketball court, an open heart that turned strangers into friends, a burgeoning art career that started when he was 4, and a way with animals that earned him the nickname "the Chihuahua Whisperer."

He also loved shoes. How much? When he got his first pair of cowboy boots at age 2, he slept with them like other kids sleep with teddy bears. When he was older, Vargas always made sure his shoes were unscuffed and styling.

An immaculate white-and-black pair of Air Jordans, wrapped in clear plastic, sits on a bookshelf in Vargas' bedroom. Recently released by the district attorney, they are the shoes Vargas, described as an innocent bystander in a late-night altercation, was wearing when he was fatally shot in a parking garage in Downtown Albuquerque three years ago.

The shoes Vargas died in at age 23 are the ones that make his parents, Terry and Lawrence Vargas, cry. But it's other shoes, hundreds of pairs given away and thousands yet to be placed in the hands of excited kids, that keep their son alive.

When Vargas was in fifth grade at Lew Wallace elementary school, he noticed a classmate with worn shoes and asked his mom if he could bring one of his many pairs of nearly new Nikes to school. He gave the sneakers to his teacher, asking her to give them to the boy and say they came from a secret friend.

It's in that spirit that Terry and Lawrence and their son, David, will head out on Interstate 40 on Saturday with a trailer filled with 500 pairs of new shoes from Payless Shoe Source and hand them out to kids at Laguna Pueblo.

The Lawrence Charles Vargas Shoes-For-Kids Foundation has given away close to 500 pairs of shoes already. But as Terry Vargas told me over coffee in her Albuquerque home the other day, "It goes way beyond a pair of shoes."

Terry and Lawrence launched the shoe giveaway in the name of their son in a big way. Last May, they arranged with Payless Shoe Source to get shoes at a deep discount, and with buses donated by Herrera Coaches took the entire student body of Lew Wallace shopping. All 300 kids. The Albuquerque Fire Department showed up and gave firetruck rides, and Terry talked about Lawrence's kindness and how people can respond to a tragedy with anger and bitterness or with love and compassion.

The Vargas family may never fully recover from the tragedy of losing their son, but it's obvious from spending some time with them that their choice was love and compassion. The photos from that day at Payless show kids beaming, clutching the shoes they picked out like they are shiny bars of gold.

Terry remembers laughing a lot that day.

"It's hard sometimes to think that because he died these things are happening," Terry said. "But that day at Payless was probably one of the most joyful days since (Lawrence) left. I hadn't felt joy for a while."

There's something about a new pair of shoes that delights just about anyone. A lot of the thank-you notes from that day use the word "shiny."

"I just can't stop looking at my shoes because they're new," one young man wrote.

Terry and Lawrence Vargas have also found that when they put their son's example of generosity into practice, they attracted generosity.

When Mike Trujillo, the chaplain for the Albuquerque firefighters union, found out that Lawrence's dream to become a firefighter was cut short, he introduced himself by leaving a prayer on their answering machine and became a teammate in the shoe giveaways.

Mike Blea, district manager for Payless, initially gave a shoe discount as a business transaction, but has since become a close friend.

Opportunities arose to market Lawrence's artwork -- prints, painted candles, notecards -- to raise money to fund the efforts.

A foundation in Arizona donated a trailer to transport shoes to giveaway sites. And when the Vargases, Blea and Trujillo pitched their idea of a shoe giveaway to Laguna Pueblo, the tribal government responded with a daylong fair with a dunk tank, hot-air balloon, free haircuts and a band.

The theme is "unity through random acts of kindness," and that fits Lawrence Charles Vargas' memory like a comfortable pair of shoes.

Vargas' killer, ex-con Joseph Espinoza, pleaded guilty and was sentenced last year to 16 years in prison. Espinoza shot Vargas after a friend of Vargas' got into an argument with Espinoza leaving a club Downtown.

"He was an innocent bystander. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," his mother said.

Random acts of violence are harder to grasp than random acts of kindness, but the Vargases are doing their best.

"It could have been anybody's son that night, but it was our son," Lawrence says. "We believe that he was on loan to us. It's been a hard road, but we turned something really bad into something really positive."

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.

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