Feet of the Fallen
by TheDuo2000
Cooper Goldschmidt waited in the alley’s half light, shoulders hunched against the cold and against the shame that had been gnawing at him for months. He looked like someone who didn’t belong in a place like this—still handsome in that effortless, all American way that had once made teachers beam and classmates swoon. But some of the brightness had drained from his eyes, replaced by a somewhat jittery, hollow look of someone who wasn’t sleeping or eating well. Coop was still quite good looking, but he was no longer the near godling he’d been before the drugs.
He kept telling himself he wasn’t a bad person. He’d never wanted to hurt anyone. He’d been the kid with the trophies, the girlfriends, the scholarship—the one adults pointed to as proof that hard work paid off. Then the juicing scandal hit, and everything collapsed. The shame, the whispers, the sudden free‑fall from golden boy to cautionary tale had left him scrambling for something—anything—that dulled the ache. Meth had stepped in to fill the void, and now it ruled him with a grip he couldn’t break.
Across the street, an elderly man shuffled along the sidewalk, leaning heavily on a wooden cane. Cooper’s stomach twisted. This was the plan—this was the moment—but every instinct in him recoiled. The old man walked slowly, unaware, humming softly to himself. He reminded Cooper of his grandfather, the one person who’d never judged him even after everything went wrong.
Cooper pressed his palms to his eyes. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to be this. But the craving clawed at him, whispering that he had no choice, that he needed the money, that he’d deal with the guilt later.
He stepped out of the alley.
“Sir—hey, sir—hold up a second,” Cooper called, trying to sound casual. His voice cracked. The old man turned, eyebrows raised in polite confusion.
Cooper moved in, heart pounding, hands shaking. “I just… I need your wallet. I don’t want trouble.”
The old man blinked once. Then twice. Then his expression shifted into something that was not fear, not confusion—something closer to irritation.
“Young man,” he said, tightening his grip on the cane, “I’ve lived through two wars, three recessions, and four children. You think I’m about to hand over my wallet to a boy who can’t even look me in the eye?”
Cooper barely had time to register the words before the cane swung.
It wasn’t graceful, but it was effective. The old man jabbed, swatted, and thumped with surprising precision. Cooper stumbled backward, arms flailing, trying not to fall but failing spectacularly. A final whack to the shoulder sent him sprawling onto the pavement.
He lay there stunned, winded, and thoroughly defeated. The old man stood over him, breathing hard but steady.
“You’re too young to be throwing your life away,” the man said, voice firm but not unkind. “Get up. Go home. Fix yourself.”
Cooper tried to speak, but the world tilted, and darkness washed over him.
When he came to, the sky was dimming and the street was empty. His body ached, but the deeper pain was inside—the humiliation, the regret, the realization that he’d crossed a line he could never uncross. He hadn’t just failed at the robbery; he’d failed himself.
He pushed himself upright, leaning against the cold brick wall. For the first time in months, the craving didn’t feel like the loudest voice in his head. Instead, he heard the old man’s words echoing, steady and stubborn.
He didn’t know what came next. But lying there in the fading light, bruised and shaken, Cooper understood something he’d been avoiding: he couldn’t keep living like this. Something had to change.
A man accused of attempting to rob an elderly Portland man in his home on Saturday spent several days in the hospital after the geezer knocked him unconscious with his walking cane.
Cooper Goldschmidt, 23, made a first appearance Tuesday via video camera before Multnomah County Magistrate Dennis Little. Goldschmidt was jailed on suspicion of attempted rape, aggravated battery, criminal restraint and criminal damage to property. When asked if he had anything to say about his bond, Goldschmidt, who was wearing a neck brace, said "No" and Little left his bond at $55,200.
"He talked his way into the residence of the victim, a seventy one year old gentleman, under the guise that he was homeless and had nowhere to go," said detective Sgt. Brian Munson. "He was drunk and said he didn't want trouble with the police. He‘s a very handsome, blond blue-eyed kid with perfect teeth…who would suspect him of being a thug?"
Cooper Joseph Goldschmidt was born December 26, 1993, in Bossier City, Louisiana. He is part German due to his grandfather's German ancestry. During his childhood, Goldschmidt and his family (his mother, Constance, a photographer, and his older brother Willem Michael Goldschmidt) moved frequently, living in Chicago, Nebraska, Kansas, Virginia, Wyoming and Mexico. Goldschmidt also has two half brothers from his father's second marriage.
From 2005 through 2011, Goldschmidt was arrested numerous times on drug related charges and went several times through drug treatment programs unsuccessfully, explaining in 2010 to a judge: "It's like I have a loaded gun in my mouth and my finger's on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gunmetal." He also explained his relapses by claiming to be addicted to drugs since the age of eight; his father was giving them to him as he was also an addict.
Eventually Goldschmidt was arrested for possession of heroin, cocaine and an unloaded .357-caliber Magnum handgun, while he was speeding down Portland’s Macadam Avenue. A month later, when on parole, he trespassed into a neighbor's garage while under the influence of a controlled substance, falling asleep in one of the cars that had been parked there. He was sentenced to three years of probation and required to undergo mandatory drug testing. In 2007 he missed one of the court ordered drug tests and had to spend four months in the Multnomah County jail. When Goldschmidt missed another required drug test in 2009, he was arrested once more. Still, he was a very handsome blond blue-eyed kid and he never experienced to full wrath of the law.
This would soon change.
In the home of elderly Virgil Hamilton, this “very handsome blond blue-eyed kid” allegedly attacked the old man, held him down and attempted to rough him up, police sergeant Munson said. The oldster fought him off, however. During the struggle, he was reportedly injured and property was reportedly damaged, resulting in the other potential charges.
"The old man was fighting for his life," Munson said. "He beat the young scumbag down with his cane."
If that had been the end of the story, seventy-one-year-old Virgil Hamilton would have been hailed as a senior citizen hero, and that would be that.
But there was more to the story according to twenty-three year-old Coop Goldschmidt.
Before he passed out (following the cane beating) Goldschmidt swore that he felt Hamilton pull the sneakers off his feet and say, "Your feet smell so damn good, boy! You really must have been running around a lot today! Maybe you got all sweaty while robbing some other elderly person‘s house? Whatever the case, your big feet are all sweaty and smelly and just the way I like a boy‘s feet to be!" He then brought Coop’s right foot to his face and took deep whiffs of the area just beneath the young intruder’s toes. The old man was still sniffing the twenty-three-year-old’s socked toes when Coop passed out completely.
When he awoke, Goldschmidt realized that Virgil Hamilton had stopped smelling his socked feet and had begun licking his bare feet--his tongue taking long strokes up and down Cooper Goldschmidt's smooth and sweaty soles, around his heels, and across and between his toes on both feet. He repeated this over and over. Now helpless laughter erupted from the intruder as the oldster took a feather (He plucked it right from his own rather pimpish hat) and began to assail his sweaty, smelly bare size fourteen soles! The elderly gentleman even sadistically began to lightly trace circles inside Goldschmidt’s thighs, over and over, around and around and around … tickling his penis and balls mercilessly.
This was when Goldschmidt realized that not only had his socks been stripped from his body, but the rest of his clothing as well. In fact, the old man had used the young intruder’s socks to bind both his ankles and wrists together. Cooper Goldschmidt was completely helpless. He screamed for mercy.
The old man listened to the boy's cries, then chuckled for a moment before beginning to mercilessly scratch the soles of the boy's unprotected bare feet. The miserable young intruder immediately began bucking wildly and laughing, first with shrill, then with throaty noises. The twenty-three year-old sounded like an animal being ravaged.
After Virgil Hamilton had given Cooper Goldschmidt’s bare feet a good tongue bathing, th seventy-one-year-old began sucking on the boy's big toes, both at the same time. Goldschmidt continued to suppress his giggles as best he could, but the fact that his dick was starting to get hard didn't help matters. He managed to get his wrists free from the sock that had been cinched around them like a rope. Then, while biting down gently on one hand to stifle his laughter, he used his left hand to rub at his rock hard penis.
Meanwhile, the old man continued to slowly and lightly drag a stiff feather down Cooper Goldschmidt's slender, naked body … pausing to torture his big bare feet more. He dusted the feather from the boy's soles to his toes to heels, reversing course and slowly drawing it back up to the top again.
Thus, even as the young intruder writhed all over the ground, he fought to remain conscious for as long as he could. The twenty-three-year-old howled and shrieked with laughter for some time. In the end Cooper Goldschmidt finally gave up the fight and passed out cold.
"There may be some validity to the tickle-torture story. When we arrived, the young man was naked and unconscious and lying in his own vomit in the back of the house," Police sergeant Munson said. "He was in the hospital fourteen miles away and they stapled his scalp back on and treated his other injuries."
Cooper Goldschmidt, who last had a Portland address, was homeless and had been staying with different people in Hutchinson, Munson said. He is also being held on a warrant seeking extradition to California; though, Munson didn't know on what charges.
He was never able to prove the tickle allegations he’d leveled against elderly Virgil Hamilton.