Champ's Sports employees buy Nikes for man who couldn't afford them

CONCORD, Calif. (WPVI) -- A group of employees from a sports shop at the Sunvalley Shopping Center in Concord are being called the "Champions of Humanity" for buying a pair of shoes for a man who couldn't afford them.

At times, the employees of the Champs Sports store thought they were stuck on Groundhog Day because nearly every day a 28-year-old man known as Tyree would look around the store and ask to try on the same pair of shoes.

"Ten to 12 times, periodically coming in and 'oh can I get these, can I try these on?' But he never tried them on, that was the funny part," Champs Sports employee Fernando Oliva said.

And every time, he would stand in line to pay only to leave the shoes at the cash register and walk away unable to afford them.

That's when Oliva invited him to try on the shoes one more time.

Oliva and his co-workers did something out of the kindness of their hearts. They raised enough money to buy him those shoes and more.

One of the employees took cellphone video of the moment Tyree tried on the shoes.

"I just gave him the shoes and he tried them on and he asked, 'How much are they?' I said, 'They are $160, but don't worry about it, just try them on,' and that's when we surprised him," Oliva said.

When Oliva told him the shoes were his, Tyree thought he was kidding.

"I think he was astonished, he was like 'Wow, I'm getting shoes.' It was really cool. We knew he was happy about it," Oliva said.

The 28-year-old man was also given a cap, a hoodie and some athletic pants.

"It wasn't just me, it was everyone in the Champs store that just helped out. It was real cool, it was a good deed. We didn't expect anything out of this, at all," Oliva said.