Man With The Golden Stitch

COURIER CITY/OSCAWANA - Nick Awad said he can take any challenge and make it work.

The South Tampa tailor, who owns Sew Fast at 2209 W. Platt St., has made local celebrities look good, including former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freeman, Tampa Bay Buccaneers football players and actor John Travolta, who filmed "The Punisher" in Tampa.

When Awad headed to San Jose, Calif., last week to work with the U.S. Olympic team, he wasn't nervous at all.

"Whatever it takes to do, we'll do it," said Awad, 49. "I love to do it."

Awad is one of four tailors helping fit more than 1,000 coaches and athletes into their uniforms, from the Nike warm-up gear to the Ralph Lauren-designed pieces the team will wear at the opening ceremony when the games begin in Beijing on Aug. 8. He will spend a little more than three weeks in San Jose at the team's processing site getting the uniforms in order before the group heads to China.

Awad won't be going with them, though. He said safety requirements prohibit processing staff from being with the team in the host nation. That's how it was when he fitted the U.S. team during the 2003 and 2007 Pan American Games and the 2004 Summer Olympics. It will be the same for the Beijing Paralympic Games in September.

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, was an exception, but Awad couldn't participate that year. He was in the middle of remodeling his building near the corner of Howard Avenue and Platt. He would have loved to have been there. "Next time," he said.

Awad joined the Olympic processing team based on his local reputation. In 1992, Tampa was chosen as the processing city with the University of Tampa hosting the event. When staff members were looking for a tailor, word on the grapevine was that Awad at Sew Fast was as his shop's name described: fast. (The shop was then in the old Tampa Bay Center mall at Himes Avenue at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.)

"Based on his talent as well as flexibility and sense of urgency, we have contracted with Nick for other ... events," Nancy Gonsalves, the U.S. Olympic Committee's director of Games preparation, wrote in an e-mail.

The thrill of working with the nation's top athletes still makes Awad beam. While watching the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Awad was happy to see a gold medalist who stood on the stand to accept his medal.

"I had shortened his pants," said Awad, drawing a blank on the athlete's name but bearing a proud smile. "To be around them is amazing. People work so hard. They give their time and give their all to be the best in America. It's an honor, and there is no limit to explain what it's like to work with them."

Born in Lebanon, Awad excelled in school. Because he didn't have his summers filled with remedial work like his friends, he chose to find a job. At 14, he picked a Lebanese fashion designer just to try something different.

"It was just an open job. I tried it, and it worked for me," he said. "I worked there every summer."

The country's civil war beginning in 1975 prohibited Awad from pursing his own design business as it became dangerous traveling within the country. In 1983, he moved to New York at 24 years old. A year later, he came to Tampa.

Awad lives in North Bon Air with his wife, Salua, and their three children, ages 12, 10 and 4. Salua provides alteration services for customers at J. Crew and the Banana Republic at WestShore Plaza and International Plaza. Awad doesn't foresee his children taking up their parents' trade.

"Our job is a dying art," Awad said. "Sewing is something you find in Third World countries. In America, people are so educated and there are so many opportunities. But I hope they do."