KANSAS CITY — Travis Kelce wears many hats. He’s an All-Pro tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, ubiquitous commercial pitchman, and as boyfriend to the world’s biggest pop star, Swiftie in Chief.
It was a different hat — a cartoonish chapeau — Kelce donned a decade ago when he began a journey that would impact thousands of children and families in his adopted city.
“I did a community relations deal with the Chiefs and read a Dr. Seuss book to a bunch of preschoolers,” recalled Kelce, who wore a towering red-and-white-striped top hat to the event. “And when I did that, I looked around and I’m like, `Man, this building is crazy.’ They were taking care of infants and providing meals. Not only breakfast and lunch, but they were sending kids home with dinner for their entire families.”
It was a nonprofit learning center called Operation Breakthrough, one that would grow significantly in the ensuing decade, in some part thanks to the support of the budding Chiefs star, along with many others.
The program provides education, social services and help from cradle to career for some of Kansas City’s most vulnerable children and families. Over the last decade, enrollment has grown from about 400 to nearly 1,500 students per week.
More than ever, the Chiefs are in the national spotlight as they look to become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls. Their quest begins Thursday night with the kickoff opener against the Baltimore Ravens at Arrowhead Stadium.
The Chiefs boast two of the NFL’s unofficial faces of the league in quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Kelce, who has ascended to pop-culture superstar in light of his romance with Taylor Swift, one that has him jetting all over the world to attend her concerts.
Virtually every professional athlete with any contract of note has an association with a charity. Some are emotionally invested, others view them largely as tax shelters. Kelce has gone the extra mile, buying a onetime muffler shop to expand Operation Breakthrough’s campus and create the Ignition Lab, in which students convert dilapidated jalopies into lacquered, showroom-ready electric vehicles.
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In one bay of the Ignition Lab is a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, once rusted and with a bent frame, but now transformed into a garnet-red classic modified with a Tesla drive unit. That car, bought out of a field for $14,000, is now valued at close to $200,000. It will be raffled this fall — after Kelce drives it around town and to games for a few weeks.
The class is also converting a 1973 Ford Bronco, a 1974 Chevelle Laguna donated by former Chiefs guard Will Shields, and a 1980 Chevrolet pickup that belongs to Travis’ brother, Jason Kelce, who retired as Philadelphia Eagles center after last season.
“Knowing that I can convert a car from gas to electric is one of my biggest flexes,” said Jordi Martinez, a high school senior, one of the lead students on the project.
Oz Qureshi talks about MINDDRIVE’s real-world learning program. (Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times)
Operation Breakthrough started 52 years ago in a convent on the east side of Kansas City, with two nuns watching four children so their parents could go to work. The free after-school program grew over the decades and eventually moved into an old JCPenney‘s.
Kelce first visited to read in 2015, meeting Mary Esselman, who had just taken over as president and chief executive of the program.
“It’s kind of a safe haven for kids in a very rough area of the city, from when they’re infants all the way up until they’re eighth graders,” Kelce told the Los Angeles Times. “And I asked her, `Where do they go once they get to high school,’ and she just kind of put her palms in the air and was like, `Well, this is just all we have. This is all that we can accommodate at this point.’ And I was like, man, we’ve got to do something about that.”
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1. Students and staff change classrooms during a break at Ignition Lab, part of Operation Breakthrough, with a painting of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce on the wall at right. 2. Instructor Carlos Alonzo, left, shows Miracle Chaney, 17, left, how to cut steel with a grinder in one of the shops at the Ignition Lab, part of Operation Breakthrough. 3. Nushanti Jones, 18, left, and Marquise Shelton, 17, right, install shocks on a 1969 Chevelle that they are helping re-build in the Operation Breakthrough’s Ignition Lab. (Reed Hoffman / For the Times)
First, he made an investment in the Smart Lab, helping with the robotics team along with the digital electronics and 3D printing programs. That coincided with the physical expansion of Operation Breakthrough, which purchased a warehouse on the opposite side of Troost Avenue with an enclosed walkway connecting the two buildings.
“Troost has always been the dividing line in Kansas City for race, separating poverty and prosperity,” Esselman said. “So when we put that bridge in it was super significant because it was like bridging the east and west.”
Soon after, Kelce bought the old muffler shop and, along with Operation Breakthrough and another nonprofit called MINDDRIVE, helped launch the Ignition Lab. Kelce’s foundation is 87 and Running, a reference to his jersey number. He would frequently drop by, check in with kids, occasionally helping work on the car.
“He would never wear his Chiefs stuff,” Esselman said. “He just acted like a regular person, so that’s the way a lot of our kids see him, as a regular person.”
Oz Qureshi, Director of MINDDRIVE, talks about how they converted a 1969 Chevy Chevelle SS to an electric engine. (Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times)
Nushawnti Jones, who is in her fourth year in the program, said she was nervous to approach Kelce when she first encountered him in the garage.
“I was like, `I can’t believe he’s here,’ and he was walking around like this was his place,” said Jones, 18, a high school senior. “But he’s a normal dude — a big normal dude. He treats people like he knows them.”
Especially since he started dating Swift, it’s tough for Kelce to have any semblance of a normal life and difficult to make those unannounced pop-ins at Operation Breakthrough. He continues to help the program with various fundraisers.
“He shared with his manager that this was the one [commitment] he wanted to continue to do because it keeps him connected to the kids,” Esselman said. “I love that.”
“The place,” Kelce said, “is a hidden gem.”
And has he brought his girlfriend by for a look?
“Not yet,” Esselman said. “But you never know.”
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