A small step to help Haiti
<p>Beth Leonardo and her son, Avery, unload shoes for Haiti at her parent's house in Post Falls. Leonardo collected 323 donated pairs of shoes, most of which were donated by employees of Century 21 Beutler & Associates.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - Beth Leonardo arrived in Coeur d'Alene from Seattle on Friday to pick up new and lightly-used shoes that were collected here and will be transported to Haiti for earthquake relief.
However, about 20 minutes before leaving Seattle on Thursday she thought she would just take her Nissan Altima, and throw the shoes in the trunk when she got here, not expecting all the shoes she's headed back with today - nearly 7,000.
Fortunately, Leonardo, 36, a 1992 graduate of Coeur d'Alene High School, decided to take a pickup truck for the trip.
On Friday, though, as the shoe totals started to pile up, she voiced concern that a single pickup truck might not be large enough, and as it turned out it wasn't, exceeding all her expectations.
Her first stop in Coeur d'Alene was Century 21 Beutler & Associates, at 1836 Northwest Blvd., where 13 large plastic bags stuffed with 323 pairs of shoes were loaded by her 9-year-old son, Avery, and others.
In addition to the shoes picked up at Century 21, Leonardo, a real estate agent for John L. Scott Real Estate, in Mukilteo, Wash., picked up about 2,000 pairs at Custom Truck, at 254 W. Kathleen Ave. She snagged 4,000 more at Custom Truck in Spokane.
Century 21 began collecting shoes because Leonardo's friend, Chad Oakland, is a real estate agent there.
Candace Godwin, marketing director at Century 21 here, said collecting the shoes was fun, "the way everybody kind of pitched in."
About 95 percent of the shoes collected by Century 21 came from employees at the agency's Coeur d'Alene, Lewiston, Liberty Lake, and Spokane offices, Godwin said. Shoes also were donated by Kootenai Title Co. and Baker Construction & Development, she said.
Leonardo, of Seattle, said she got involved in the "Shoes for Haiti" drive after seeing the damage to the small country from the magnitude-7 earthquake.
"It touched my heart, and so I started wanting to get my friends to collect shoes," she said. She found out about the shoe drive on the social-networking Web site Facebook, she said.
Leonardo today will be headed out of town and back to Seattle with the pickup truck's bed loaded with shoes, and she'll be pulling a loaded 5- by 10-foot U-Haul cargo trailer.
From the Portland area, Puget Sound area, and Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area, about 17,000 shoes in all will have been collected as part of the "Shoes for Haiti" drive, Leonardo said.
All the shoes from those areas will be taken to a Tacoma warehouse, then trucked to Florida, and shipped to Haiti. Some shoes such as boots will be rushed there, she said.