"Sometimes, Yohana Quiroz would ask her father - a skilled cobbler, who had been studying the craft since he was a child - why he repaired things for customers with such perfection and attention to detail. "This is the customer's favorite bag," Quiroz remembers him saying. "This is the customer's favorite shoe. This is their favorite jacket. I need to fix it.""
""El Zapatero," as his customers knew him, grew up in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. His upbringing was far from easy. His father was not around, and his mother abandoned him at a young age, leaving Torres to raise himself. He began repairing shoes as a child, and by the time he was 18 or so, he knew the ins and outs of the trade."
"He moved to the United States in 1974, and worked at the Montgomery Shoe Repair shop downtown until 1990, when the owner of a storefront at 29th and Mission cut him a deal on rent. "I always wanted to be independent," Torres told Mission Local in 2021. "To work for myself, and not have to depend on others." Also, said his wife, Dilsia, in that 2021 interview, he was "a perfectionist." Albeit one with "a very tender heart.""
Nicolas Torres, known as El Zapatero, repaired shoes, bags, belts and jackets in the Mission for 33 years and died on Dec. 1 at age 79 from liver cancer. He grew up in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, raised himself after parental abandonment, and learned cobbling as a child. He moved to the United States in 1974 and worked at Montgomery Shoe Repair until obtaining a storefront at 29th and Mission in 1990. He named Alexander's Shoe Repair after his son. He specialized in challenging repairs and crafted shoes for clients with unconventional or injured feet, expanding into wallets, belts and bags.
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