The retired N.C. State track coach is 80 and knows he's a longer-than-long-shot candidate for Janet Cowell's Senate seat.

His opponents, Jack Nichols and Josh Stein, are well-known, well-financed and well-qualified.

At least one of the big endorsement groups didn't even ask Shea to come in for an interview or fill out a questionnaire. The rest failed to lend him their support.

His own family members, including his daughter, former Raleigh city councilwoman Julie Shea Graw, urged him not to run.

"They think I'm too old and I won't want the job if I get it," he told me.

And, of course, his children are right.

For one thing, Shea hates committee meetings. And there are just a few of those on deck when you become a senator.

For another, he doesn't much care for liars.

Even Shea's wife of 54 years initially refused her backing.

"At first she said she'd vote against me," he said. "Then she said she wasn't going to vote in the race. Now that I haven't gotten any endorsements, she says she's going to vote for me so I don't embarrass myself.

"At least I'll get two votes," he quipped.

So if that's what he's up against, why did Shea bother plunking down the couple of hundred bucks it costs to file?

Because Shea has identified an issue that he believes is mainly being ignored by our state.

That is, rehabilitating young men (and women) who are being released from prison and are destined to return if they don't get intensive help finding a new path.

Shea knows about this population because he has been volunteering with a program at Polk Youth Institute in Butner for years with another member of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church.

"About 70 percent of these kids end up back in Polk," Shea said, shaking his head. "I see some of them three or four times."

And that's before they "graduate" to adult prison.

Shea says programs to help these kids get (and keep) jobs, find safe housing and generally resist their former temptations could dramatically reduce the recidivism rate. And that would help not only the prisoners but also the general public's safety.

"I know I'm a one-issue guy," Shea said. "I don't know much about the highways or health care, but I think there's room in that Senate for one one-issue guy."

I have to admit that I decided to write about Shea in part because he reminds me of my own father: octogenarians, veterans and devout Catholics who believe social justice is a personal responsibility, not an abstraction.

He speaks his mind, to heck with what anybody else thinks. He has a heart of gold.

Shea ran for public office for the first time four years ago, at age 76, when the seat Cowell is now vacating in a bid for state treasurer first came open. He told me he had to essentially cede that race to Cowell after he was injured in a car accident and couldn't do a big push in the final six weeks of the campaign, as he'd planned.

I asked whether this time, what with the endorsement situation as it is, perhaps he could just persuade his opponents to take up the banner of prisoner assistance.

He scoffed.

"They won't do it," he said. "The only one who will is me."