This Matchmaker Unites Deserving Soles

Ann Cross is a suburban housewife with a mission--she pairs off thousands of odd-sized feet across Britain.

If both your feet are the same size, spare a thought for those who are not so lucky.

Cross runs Solemates, a one-woman organization dedicated to pairing off people who are beyond the help of normal shoe stores.

People with one foot bigger than the other normally have to buy two pairs of shoes and throw one of each pair away--a wasteful and expensive proposition.

So Cross, 49, specializes in matching pairs of uneven feet and sending their owners shopping together.

Almost everybody has very slightly odd-sized feet, but most of the people Cross deals with have feet two or more sizes different, although this is by no means unusual or a grotesque deformity.

Many of her clients have no physical problems, but some have suffered from polio, others have spina bifida, some have been in accidents and others might have only one leg.

Every room in her neat suburban home in Chingford on the northeastern outskirts of London is stacked with boxes of shoes--in odd sizes of course--and her dining room table doubles as a desk.

She started the organization after finding that her son David had odd-sized feet, and she now has a list of more than 3,000 people from all parts of the country she can use to match odd pairs of feet.

“There were a couple of ladies--one comes from Surrey and the other from Leicester--who met halfway, did their shoe shopping and then went their separate ways again,” she said in an interview.

Since it began in 1976, Solemates has grown in leaps and bounds, with fresh inquiries coming in daily.

Sometimes subscribers become friends, with families who have shared shoes getting together to socialize.

But often, she can only guess at whether she has been successful in putting people in touch with each other.

She never asks for personal details, beyond people’s age and sex. Mostly she is only in touch with subscribers by letter or telephone.

She tries to make sure that she matches people of a similar age, as a grandmother and a teen-ager are unlikely to see eye to eye on footwear styles.

But after running Solemates for 14 years, Cross has an instinct for the sort of shoes people will like.

“One person’s choice is not another’s, but normally I get it right,” she said.

With some people who have corresponding odd-sized feet, it is only the fact that they have not got in touch with her again that makes her think the partnership is working.

A local sporting goods store donated 1,500 odd soccer boots, but this was not much help as most Solemates, as they are known, are only interested in finding shoes for everyday wear.

Cross is often sent odd shoes by manufacturers and stores that have no use for them. She matches them up with requests on her files and sells them cheaply to people who need them.

Cross also charges a nominal fee to people wanting to subscribe to her register. Any money left over at the end of the year goes to children’s charities.

“I can’t make a business out of people’s misfortune,” she said.

She has refused to pass on her list of subscribers to businessmen who want to operate the register on a commercial basis.

Running Solemates gives Cross a good deal of quiet satisfaction. But the name she has chosen occasionally causes confusion.

“Could you find me a soul mate?” said one telephone caller under the impression she was running a dating agency.