Scott Swanson
When Jake Fanning got a text from his wrestling coach, Steve Thorpe, last week, he thought it was going to be about work.
“He said he had job details for me,” Fanning said.
Instead, Thorpe handed him keys to a pickup truck, a gift from retired Sweet Home High School teacher Tom Horn and his wife Kathy.
The Horns had sold their home on 5th Avenue and had decided not to take their 1999 GMC Sonoma pickup with them in a move to Arizona.
“We figured we could be one-car family down here,” Tom Horn said last week from Scottsdale, Ariz., where he and Kathy were preparing to have breakfast on an 80-degree morning.
“We hadn’t made any kind of decision. We didn’t want to sell it. So one evening we had a discussion about how to get rid of this car. Kathy brought up the idea of giving it to the wrestling program, let Steve handle it.”
Horn was a star athlete at Sweet Home High School in the 1970s, then coached and taught for 31 years in the school district, continuing for another eight years after he retired.
He said he visited with Thorpe and they decided that there were better options than, say, raffling the vehicle off as a fund-raiser.
“We decided we should just give it to some deserving soul,” Horn said.
Thorpe said Horn wanted to “pay it forward” and told him “I would like you to find a kid to give it to.”
He also said the Horns wanted to keep things low-key.
“He said it’s not really that big of a deal, anything special,” Thorpe said. “I told him, you don’t have any idea how big a thing this is going to be for somebody.”
He said it took him “literally less than five minutes” to decide on the recipient.
Fanning, a high school senior this year, moved in with his aunt, Laura Fanning, as a seventh-grader, and has become very involved in high school athletics and done well in the classroom, he said.
“When Jake popped into my head, I knew he would be the perfect kid for it,” Thorpe said. “His aunt has raised him, loved him. He is a three-sport athlete, with not a stitch of talent but has an incredible work ethic. He ended up making himself into state-qualifying wrestler, has been a varsity football and track athlete. He’s done all those things to make himself a better athlete while excelling in the classroom.
“He’s a great student and he’s a reliable young man you can count on. He’s a kind person. He cares about his friends, about his teammates. He cares what people think of him.”
Fanning said Thorpe came by, driving the Sonoma, after messaging him.
“He started talking about the truck, and I thought it was his,” he said. “It probably took me longer than it should have to figure out what was going on.”
Thorpe’s wife Heather had followed in their car at a distance and was videoing the exchange, which is visible at http://www.facebook.com/steve.thorpe.378.
Horn said he agreed to let Thorpe post an account on Facebook, though he preferred it being “a behind-the-scenes kind of thing.”
He said he and his wife were “in shock” by the response on social media.
“We didn’t want this kind of recognition, but maybe it will turn out to be a good thing, inspire someone else,” he said.
“Tom may have thought this truck was not that big of a deal, but I think over 100 shares on Facebook and comment after comment shows it is a big deal,” Thorpe said. “I was just thankful I got to play a part in it.”
“It was really cool,” said Fanning, who was visibly emotional when he realized what was happening, as was Thorpe.
“I have a vehicle now.”