Caboots

Why collectors care

Caboots is the living Sanchez-family custom shop in El Paso. Collectors meet colorful Champion Attitude pairs, film-period reproductions, and a 407 E. Nevada bench that is easy to confuse with vintage Champion Boot Co. mail-order plates.

This page is a bootmaker card. The family’s earlier Champion Boot Company mail-order name stays on the Champion Boot Co. page.

Shop history

Texas House H.R. 1427 (84R, 2015) records that Yldefonso Sanchez left León, Mexico, for El Paso in the 1920s, worked as a cobbler at Fort Bliss with Tony Lama, and opened his own shop in 1928. In the 1940s and 1950s his son Jose Lucas and Cuca expanded into western wear, six locations, and “repair while you wait.” In the 1960s grandson Jose Luis subcontracted for Tony Lama and Nocona. The 1970s brought an Interstate 10 store and the Urban Cowboy boom.

In the 1980s Joey and Priscilla opened Champion Attitude Accessories, then colorful Champion Attitude Boots. The resolution names Kiss, Mötley Crüe, and Bon Jovi as customers and cites period work for Pirates of the Caribbean and 3:10 to Yuma, plus Cirque du Soleil, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Chicago Lyric. Those names are reputation, not pair certificates.

KROD (28 December 2023) spells the ancestor Ildefonso, dates the CABOOTS name to 1986, and says Joe’s parents Jose and Norma “brought Justin Boot manufacturing to El Paso.” Yldefonso versus Ildefonso, and 1928 family shop versus 1986 CABOOTS name, stay visible.