How a Sebastopol gym teacher puts a spring in kids’ steps

This past August, when most families were busy back-to-school shopping, Myriah Volk got a call about two kids who couldn’t imagine showing up for the first day of school in the only pair of shoes they owned.

“They were so beat up, you could see their socks through them,” said case manager Isela Vigil at Lilliput Families.

At the age of 12 and 13, the two brothers were living with their aunt after their parents lost their housing because of drug addiction. The Santa Rosa nonprofit, which helps children and families navigate the foster care system, was helping take care of the boys.

“I was heartbroken when I heard their story,” said Volk, who founded Shoes 4 Kidz in 2015. “They were around the same age as my boys.”

She asked Vigil what colors the brothers wanted and the next day she showed up with two brand-new pairs of grey and black Nikes still in the box.

“That’s why they call me the Shoe Fairy,” said Volk. She has been asking kids what kind of shoes they’d like ever since a fifth-grader showed up to her PE class with soles splitting apart from his sneakers.

“I really had a connection with this kid. His dad had just gone to jail and his mom was really struggling,” said Volk, who teaches at the REACH charter school in Sebastopol. “He was kind of getting depressed. And it happened to be the day we ran the mile in PE He pulled me aside, kind of embarrassed, and said, ‘Hey look at my shoe, can you tape the sole?’ I looked down at his shoe and it was a mess.”

After going to the office to get electrical tape to fix his shoe, Volk decided at that moment to find a way to get new shoes for kids who needed them.

She took a photo of his shoe and launched a GoFundMe campaign, posting it all over social media. It went viral and soon she was speaking at the 20-30 Club in Sebastopol. A person who heard her talk offered to help with the paperwork to start a nonprofit and her dream was launched as Shoes 4 Kidz.

Playing basketball, soccer and softball at Healdsburg High School in the early ’90s, Volk knows a few things about wearing out shoes. An All-American in basketball, she played at Cal Poly on a basketball scholarship.

For the Shoes 4 Kidz board, she recruited another All-American - Jerry Robinson, who played football at Cardinal Newman before being named All-American three years in a row at UCLA. A first-round draft pick for the Philadelphia Eagles, he played most of his career for the Oakland Raiders.

Last year, when Robinson delivered a new pair of shoes to a kid who lost everything in the Tubbs fire, it was a meeting he’ll never forget.

“He was speechless at first. I don’t think he knew what to say,” Robinson said. “But he had no idea how much of a gift it was for me, like I was the one getting something at that moment. I thought I was going to cry.”

It was an added bonus that the kid also happened to be a huge Raiders fan.

By now Volk and her crew have given away more than 2,000 pairs of shoes. At any given moment she has 20 pairs of shoes in her car trunk and a pallet of shoes in storage that Nike donated after the fires. It’s not always possible, but she still tries to personally deliver the shoes and meet the kids, just as she did for the two brothers before school started in August.

“They both looked so sad at first, and who wouldn’t be if you don’t have your mom and your dad?” she said “To see them light up and get that confidence back in their step - that’s what it’s all about.”

The staff at Lilliput Families, which has called on Volk more than 20 times over the past two years, could see the immediate impact.

“When the boys tried on those shoes - you know boys at that age, they don’t always show a lot of emotion - but you could just tell how their face and their confidence changed with those brand-new shoes,” said Vigil. “Now, they were able to go back to school.”