After East Hampton store flood, nonprofit salvages 7,500 pairs of sneakers for people in need

A mound of thousands of running sneakers covered a spacious garage floor in Southampton on Friday morning and volunteers with Hamptons Community Outreach quickly realized they needed a sorting strategy.

Their painstaking mission: to pair each of the soles with its lost match in order to salvage about 7,500 sets of sneakers that were drenched in a store flood and being prepped as charitable donations.

Hamptons Community Outreach accepted the unique challenge after a water main break in February flooded the basement of Gubbins Perfect Fit in East Hampton Village. It left the sporting goods store’s inventory of shoes unfit for sale.

But in the merchant's moment of misfortune, the nonprofit saw an opportunity. The shoes potentially could be salvaged and donated to community members in need.

“It was just a huge project, but at the same time an incredible project because we knew how many people we could help,” said Marit Molin, the nonprofit's founder and executive director.

So on Friday, a group of volunteers joined with nonprofit officials to sort shoes on a blue tarp outside the garage by tossing them into different piles based on their brands. Nikes went in one pile, Hokas in another, New Balance in another and so on.

“We started off by just having everything in a pile and just sorting and then we quickly realized that was not time-efficient,” Molin said.

Rewinding to the beginning, the story started on a Sunday morning in February when Geary Gubbins, 36, who has run his family's shoe business since 2013, received a call from a neighboring building's owner.

Gubbins learned that Gubbins Perfect Fit, at 54 Park Place, was among several businesses damaged by a Main Street water main break.

Later, as Gubbins sludged through the remains of his inventory while his insurance company assessed damage, he got a text from Hamptons Community Outreach volunteer Alyssa Bahel. 

Bahel, 25, told Gubbins that if he needed a place to donate the soggy shoes, she had the perfect contender.

“I had no doubt in my mind that this was something we could handle," Bahel recalled later.

Gubbins said later he was confident from the start that most of the shoes could be salvaged for donation, but realized it would take an extraordinary effort. 

"That was our concern," the store owner recalled. "Who would be passionate enough to take on such a difficult challenge?"

Nonprofit outreach coordinator Chuck MacWhinnie, 76, recalled heading out to East Hampton not long after and seeing all the bags of wet shoes jammed inside a shipping container. 

The nonprofit brought the load back to Southampton in a trailer, before Molin sought help from Servpro of the East End and Hamptons, a cleanup company that donated its time.

A Servpro crew set up dehumidifiers, fans and heaters in the garage. 

After three days, MacWhinnie was part of the salvage crew that went into the sauna-like building to shuffle shoes around and move those on the bottom of the pile to the top so they also could dry.

"The building was cooking at 95 degrees," MacWhinnie said.  

Then after another three days, the shoes were dry.

Remarkably, nearly all were salvageable, nonprofit officials said, with many visually indistinguishable from an undamaged pair.  Molin estimated only about 50 pairs had to be tossed out.  

In the last two weeks, other East End nonprofits, charitable groups and schools have picked up sneakers to distribute to the needy as the sorting operation continues.

MacWhinnie joked Friday that they should get a bell to ring each time someone links up a lost sole with its partner shoe.

But bell or no bell, each small victory brings joy.

Like when Molin triumphantly held up two white sneakers, smiled and yelled: "There's a match!"