It’s not often a person donates more than $3,000 worth of favorite apparel, and a Greenwood man said it was especially difficult to give up his Air Jordans.
Jeffrey Nickson, who works at Hickok Electronics, said he loved all 23 pairs of his Air Jordans, but as of Saturday afternoon he only has three pairs left.
“I was at the store and overheard these two guys talking about getting ready to steal some shoes,” Nickson said. “I told them they didn’t have to do that.”
He went to his home and brought back two pairs from his own collection. After he went home that night, he thought he may be able to help even more people.
“Why should I have so many pairs if there’s people out there who need shoes?” he said. “I wanted to give them out; I just didn’t want to have to go around trying to find everyone that needed shoes.”
So he went to the Salvation Army and donated 20 pairs of mint-condition size 14 Air Jordans valued between $125 and $200 a pair.
He said he was feeling good about doing a good deed and hasn’t stopped to think about missing the footwear.
“It was hard. I really liked those shoes,” he said. “It will probably hit me tonight when I go home to match up my outfit.”
Nickson originally came from Chicago, where Michael Jordan, the namesake of the shoe brand, played for the Bulls.
Nickson was a big fan of Jordan and said he had been collecting the shoes for years. Despite their age, every pair had been carefully kept clean. Still in their original boxes, none of the shoes showed any sign of wear.
“I took real good care of them,” Nickson said. “But there’s people out there who could use them more than I can. I hope that this will mean a lot to whoever gets them.”
•Contact Taylor Kuykendall at tkuykendall@gwcommonwealth.com.
