LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A local tattoo shop owner is using his childhood experience in foster care to help current foster children during the holiday season.
Robert Gonzalez, owner of Koolsville Tattoos, operates nine shops across the valley. His success story began decades earlier in the 1970s when his father died in front of him on Father’s Day weekend and he was placed into foster care with only the clothes on his back.
“When you get there, you’re just like a deer in the headlights. You don’t know what to expect, you don’t know why you’re there,” Gonzalez said. “It’s probably one of the worst feelings that you can have. I mean, you’re all alone. You don’t understand why. No one really tells you anything.”
Gonzalez spent the rest of his childhood in foster care, passing time with drawing while waiting for a family that never came.
“You know, don’t worry, we’re gonna get to you and it might seem like a minute to them. But to you, it’s something that’s big. It’s like your whole world. Because it is your whole world,” he said.
Now, over 50 years later, that childhood hobby of drawing is fueling a career of giving back. Using his own experience of having nothing in the system, Gonzalez wants to make sure foster children in Clark County have something.
Koolsville Tattoos is offering free $50 flash tattoos to anyone who brings in at least $30 worth of new toys, clothes, pajamas or other items to make the holiday season more merry for foster children.
“That makes my heart warm that I can afford to do that and help them,” Gonzalez said.
From now until Dec. 19, people can stop by any Koolsville Tattoo location during its hours of operation to donate and claim their free tattoo.
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