In 1985, Louis Fote Jr. was a sixth grader at Lakeridge Elementary School and had nowhere to play. Playgrounds were too far from his north Renton home. His overprotective parents didn’t help. So he collected more than 100 student signatures, pleaded his case at a year’s worth of City Council and Parks Board meetings, (fighting ornery adults along the way) and got his playground built, at downtown Renton’s Jones Park, between the Cedar River and Wells and Main avenues.

He picked out a slide, firepole, tire swing and an exerglide, which he describes as a “fancy swing from back in the day.”

Fote says he was shocked that the playground went through, “but happy that a little kid could actually get something done.”

Most of Fote’s friends moved away before the playground was built, but three or four stuck around and used the toys.

Today, Fote is 34, lives near Spanaway and works as a Safeway night stocker. Jones Park still has a playground, but it’s not the one Fote designed. Fote’s playground was uprooted in 1994 or ‘95, around the time he came back from his freshman year at Bellevue Community College. Fote was disappointed no one consulted him about the new equipment.

“I came back from college and it was all tore up, nothing was there,” he says.