Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
Boy, bistro see the art of giving

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But three other restaurants had failed in the Capitol Hill space where Maguire's Irish Bistro was opening. So owner Mick McHugh felt he had to do something more.

He gathered his employees together to talk about the good things they hoped would happen there. Afterward, they burned sage and incense "to chase all the negative vibes out of the place," he said.

Then McHugh called Mary Larson, an artist and nurse at the Harborview Medical Center's Pioneer Square Clinic, and asked her to display some of the portraits she has painted of her homeless clients.

But nothing boded as well for Maguire's as the night Devin Arvio, 12, came in with his mother, Rachel, after a garage sale at their Mount Baker home.

The boy was scanning the walls, waiting for his food, when he settled on Larson's portrait of a man named Douglas, wearing a New York Yankees cap and a modest smile.

It made Devin think of the New York boarding school he will attend this fall. "Plus, he looks like he has a history and a personality," he said.

That night, Devin called Larson to ask how much the painting cost. Larson, who doesn't accept cash, asked for 50 pairs of shoes for her clinic clients.

With $500 from the garage-sale, birthday savings and money earned helping his jewelry-making mother, Devin went to two stores, buying shoes: women's and men's, sneakers and loafers. Fifty pairs, just like Larson said.

A few days later, he and his mother dropped the shoes off at the clinic.

And a few days after that, a crowd gathered at Maguire's: Devin's mother and grandmother, Larson and her parents, McHugh's sisters and assorted regulars, all beaming over this kid who had become Larson's youngest customer — and so much more.
 
Here was a boy who had saved for months to buy a portable DVD player. And when he finally had enough, he spent it on total strangers.

"There's just that possibility of what the money could be," he told me. "And then the reality that I could have a painting, and people could have shoes."

Said his mother: "To him, it seemed like the perfect thing."

To many, it seemed like a small miracle.

"How many 12-year-olds have that kind of social conscience?" McHugh asked. "That's what we're celebrating tonight."

Larson spoke of Devin's large heart, and told of how Douglas — the homeless man in the portrait — fell in love with a pair of Devin's donated sneakers that, unfortunately, were too small. (Devin wants to get him a pair that fits.)

A sigh rippled through the crowd as Larson took her painting down and handed it to its new owner.

The boy's mother blinked back tears and then let out a breath like a bubble bursting.

"He's a very compassionate kid," she said as they settled into a booth. "He has a lot of good in him."

"I do?" he asked.

"You do."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Art over technology. Yay!