GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. - Hundreds of Colorado residents are suddenly rebuilding their lives from the ground up, and that starts with their feet.
Sock It To 'Em, a local nonprofit that has been collecting socks since 2011, collected 6,500 pairs of socks from Greenwood Village Thursday to close the gap for residents who are missing an often undervalued clothing item after losing everything in the Marshall Fire.
"They're the number one clothing need of the homeless," said co-founder Sue Lee. "And then, one of the number one reasons a person who's homeless goes to the hospital is a foot issue. And the way to prevent that is clean, dry socks."
Lee and her co-founder Phillis Shimamoto have tried to answer the need for the overlooked necessity for over a decade, but the level of demand has increased significantly in the last two weeks after thousands of people were displaced by the fire.
Specifically, the city of Superior, which has been running annual drives for Sock It To 'Em for multiple years, is suddenly on the other end of the donations.
"It gets me teary eyed. ...They've done a stocking run every year, and now there's so many of them in need," said Lee. "So it's wonderful that the mayor's down here and the cities here have collected, and we can now support Superior."
Greenwood Village has wrapped up its drive, but the cities of Centennial, Lone Tree, and Englewood are still collecting. For more information, you can head to DonateSocks.org.
