The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Teen collects shoes for people in need
Kyler Nipper, who has a foot condition, was always bullied in school because of his shoes. He’s now helping others.
Three years ago, Kyler Nipper ended up in an emergency room in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after several middle-school classmates bullied him about his worn-out shoes while he was on his way to biology class. One of the boys stabbed him multiple times in the chest and shoulder with a sharp pencil, puncturing his lung.
Kyler, then 11 and in sixth grade, was hospitalized with a breathing tube for three days and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of the incident, said his mother, Sherise Nipper. She and her husband, Nick, a chef, pulled him out of school and arranged for him to be home-schooled. Kyler had a few coping ideas of his own.
The boy accused of stabbing Kyler was arrested, suspended from school and later put on probation for one year with an ankle monitor, she said.
Before the incident, Kyler said he had been teased and bullied because he walked on his tiptoes due to a condition known as idiopathic toe walking. Shorter-than-normal Achilles tendons prevented his heels from touching the ground.
“Because his shoes would bend in half from walking on his toes, they were always bunching up and cracking,” Sherise Nipper said. “We’d get him new ones, and they’d wear out in weeks. Because his shoes were always trashy, some kids decided to tease him about it.”
About a week after the incident, he decided to put a shoe donation box outside his family’s apartment. He then received permission from several stores in Colorado Springs to put out large cardboard boxes to collect new and gently used shoes from customers.
“Kyler’s Kicks,” he wrote on each box. “Please donate shoes for those in need.”
Over the next four months, so many people donated, Sherise Nipper said, that a local business donated the use of a party bus so she and Kyler could drive around low-income neighborhoods once a month. Families would hop aboard the bus and pick out whatever kind of shoes they desired.
In March 2017, the Nippers became homeless when they could no longer afford to pay rent on their apartment because of all of their medical bills. “There were just too many to keep up with,” Sherise Nipper said.
She and her husband decided to move their family to Las Vegas to get a fresh start.
After the move, Kyler decided it was important to keep his shoe effort going, even though his family was continuing to have financial troubles. Kyler’s Kicks has since collected and given out more than 25,000 pairs of shoes — mostly to at-risk children, teenagers and homeless people in Las Vegas.
Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation and Zappos for Good are among the partnerships that now donate shoes to his cause.
Now 14, Kyler said he devotes about five hours a day to Kyler’s Kicks, which he fits in between his home studies. He cleans many of the shoes himself before giving them away.
“It makes me feel amazing, and it’s helping to heal my PTSD,” he said.
Kyler had orthopedic surgery to correct his “tiptoeing,” just before the stabbing, said his mother. He was wearing casts on his feet at the time of the pencil attack Oct. 7, 2016.
Not long ago, he said, he was walking down the street, and he saw a barefooted man who looked homeless. Kyler figured he and the man had the same size feet, so he slid off his own shoes and gave them to the man. They both walked away happy, Kyler said. And that’s what keeps him going.
“It’s the best feeling ever,” he said.