At the end of a long work day driving an 18-foot refrigerator truck around town to pick up food that otherwise might go to waste and deliver it to people who otherwise might go hungry, Tim Sanford reflected on the mission of We Don’t Waste. Last year alone, the nonprofit organization rescued almost 4,000 tons of food left over from Denver venues like Sports Authority Field at Mile High, the Pepsi Center and Coors Field that eventually ended up at shelters and food banks.

What came to mind as he closed out another day was the time he delivered a tub filled with apples to the Adams County Food Bank.

“We dropped it off in the back, they rolled it away, we closed the truck up, and when we came around the front, there were two or three little kids who were bent over, pulling handfuls of apples out,” said Sanford, We Don’t Waste’s director of operations. “It was like Christmas morning to them.”

For We Don’t Waste, the sum of mercy is found in a simple equation: Forty percent of the food produced in the U.S. is wasted, according to the National Resources Defense Council, while one out of 10 Coloradans is “food insecure.” We Don’t Waste “rescues” food, as the group calls it, so it can settle in bellies instead of landfills.

The volume it moves is staggering. In 2017, We Don’t Waste provided nearly 30 million servings — the equivalent of 10 million meals — to food banks, homeless shelters and other recipient partners who serve the hungry in Colorado. It also partner with Nation to Nation, a Loveland ministry that transports food and clothing to the Lakota Sioux at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which has the lowest per capita income in the U.S.

“There’s nothing more pure and satisfying than helping someone eat,” said We Don’t Waste driver Matthew Karm. “We are fortunate and get to fill our cups every day. I’m honored to be a part of something as magical and human as this.”

Until last year, We Don’t Waste operated out of a tiny office in the RiNo district with barely enough room for a couple of desks shared by five people and no place to store food. Then, in November, the operation moved into an 11,570-square-foot facility in Adams County, its Food Rescue and Distribution Center near Furniture Row. It has a cooler that is more than 40 percent larger than the size of the entire former office.

“It’s a major game-changer,” said Arlan Preblud, We Don’t Waste’s founder and executive director. “All of the food we would pick up prior to November 2017 had to be delivered out (immediately). It took us over a year to find this property because we were competing with the marijuana industry, which has tied up most of the warehousing in Denver. And they obviously have the cash dollars to pay whatever the price is.”

The story of We Don’t Waste goes back to 2009, when Preblud wondered what happened to leftover food after games at Denver’s stadiums and arenas. The answer: It all went to waste, and it was the same with many caterers in town.

“If you have a party for 250, the caterer always prepares extra so they don’t run out of food,” Preblud said. “But inevitably, if you invite 250 to the party, only 230 show up, so they have all this extra food.”

In 2010, Preblud began picking up excess food from caterers and taking it to organizations that assist the poor, working out of the back of a Volvo station wagon. A year later, he started getting food from the stadiums and arenas. A beer distributor donated a van with 200,000 miles on it, a “Pabst Blue Ribbon” sign still painted on the side. The first delivery Preblud made with the van happened to be to a shelter for recovering alcoholics.

“It was like a chorus when I drove up,” Preblud recalled. “They said, ‘Wow, we didn’t know this was part of the program.’ I said, ‘I’m not here to deliver beer.’ ”

We Don’t Waste now has three refrigerator trucks and seven full-time employees, including Sanford, Karm and Dana Van Daele, a “food recovery specialist” who has been working pick-ups and deliveries while seven months pregnant.

“It brings joy to me every day, feeding people who need to be fed and having relationships with the recipients and the donors,” said Van Daele, who used to work in the fashion industry. “It’s what gets me up every morning.”

We Don’t Waste typically gets more than 4,000 servings just from the luxury suites after every Broncos game — wings, barbecue chicken and pork, pork tenderloin, even prime rib. We Don’t Waste volunteers sweep the suites after a game, recovering leftovers and storing them in a refrigerated cooler at the stadium overnight for pick-up the next day.

“The agencies we deliver to get excited when the Broncos play, because they know in a couple of days, they’re going to have excellent prime food,” Preblud said. “Not that the other product isn’t good, but it’s special for them.”

Then, a couple of days after a game, We Don’t Waste crews swing by the stadium again to pick up hot dogs, hamburgers, sausages and other leftover food from the concession stands that has been frozen for pick-up.There are similar arrangements with the Pepsi Center and Coors Field.

The kitchen at the Colorado Convention Center, one of the biggest in the state, is a huge We Don’t Waste supplier. One day this month they called We Don’t Waste offering more than 600 leftover breakfast burritos that were still hot. Sanford took them to the Lawrence Street Center of the Denver Rescue Mission, where they became that day’s lunch.

“Those are the good days,” Van Daele said.

Sometimes food distributors donate produce that grew in odd shapes that grocery shoppers might find off-putting but is perfectly edible. A dock master at a local distributor recently refused receipt of a pallet loaded with 1,400 pounds of organic chicken because one box had been damaged by a fork lift. Preblud was thrilled to get it.

In just one day last month, Sanford and Van Daele made the rounds to Project Angel Heart, the Adams County Food Bank, the Denver Rescue Mission, Metro Caring, the City Harvest Food Bank (Volunteers of America), the Convention Center, Salvation Army’s Crossroads Shelter and a massive commercial produce distributor. While dropping off at Project Angel Heart, they saw meals being produced by hand on an assembly line for delivery to homebound people who are terminally ill.

At the Adams County Food Bank, We Don’t Waste volunteers offloaded four pallets of yogurt, hamburger buns, peppers and collard greens. At the Denver Rescue Mission, they picked up 1,000 pounds of fresh kale that the mission couldn’t use, delivering half of it to Metro Caring and the other half to City Harvest. At the convention center, they picked up 168 box lunches, 240 sandwiches, enormous bags of fresh fruit and vegetables, sacks of granola and other goodies, taking it straight to the Crossroads Shelter.

And that was only one of the three trucks in operation that day. Karm, who drove one of the other trucks, said the populations they serve get excited when they see a We Don’t Waste truck pull up. He remembers making a drop-off at Crossroads once and hearing a man exclaim, “We get to eat good food tonight!”

A generation ago, Preblud founded the players association of the American Basketball Association, a rival to the NBA with which it merged in 1976. He also was a practicing attorney before founding We Don’t Waste.

“I think we all have a responsibility to look out for those who are less fortunate and those who are most vulnerable,” Preblud said. “Some people look aside and don’t want to see that problem, but it’s there.”

And it’s not going away.

“We’re not going to feed everyone,” Sanford said. “Hunger will be here tomorrow and it will be here next week when we come to work, but it doesn’t mean we should not keep after it. Thousands of people are going to eat in the next few days with what this one truck did.”

About We Don’t Waste

In 2017, We Don’t Waste received food donations from more than 125 organizations and transferred it to more than 80 hunger-relief agencies. Fresh dairy, produce, protein and prepared foods accounted for about half, and almost 4,000 tons fed the hungry instead of being taken to landfills.

The dollar value of the food We Don’t Waste distributed to the needy last year exceeded $28 million. We Don’t Waste is a non-for-profit organization supported by 20 corporate benefactors and foundations along with charitable contributions and a fundraising dinner every fall. The seventh “Fill a Plate for Hunger” event will be Sept. 13 at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

We Don’t Waste is partnering with the Cherry Creek Sneak road races (5K, 5-mile and 10-mile) on April 22. When registering, runners have the option to designate a donation to We Don’t Waste. Unused food will be collected for distribution by We Don’t Waste, which also will have an information booth at the race expo.