McIntosh asked the man if he needed help. The man looked up at him with tear-swollen eyes and nodded his head. As McIntosh proceeded to help the man, he realized that the man was trying to remove a slightly squashed birthday cake.
McIntosh recalled the man saying to him as they struggled to remove the cake from the close shelves of the bread rack, “Our baby is gonna have a cake for her first birthday.”
“I think by the time we got the cake out, we were all crying,” McIntosh said. “And it really struck me in the world I live in — every 1-year-old has a cake for their first birthday. Everybody has a cake, don’t they? No they don’t.”
At that moment, McIntosh realized that not everyone is fortunate enough to afford that symbolic birthday cake.
The event became a pivotal point in McIntosh’s life. “Although it’s not nutritious food, it was a real turning point,” McIntosh said. “That cake. That’s what hooked me in and set me in high gear to help and do all that I could.”
It was seven years ago when McIntosh was drawn into the Weld Food Bank, because he has compassion for others.
“It’s easy to go through our lives when we have jobs, and we drive by the hungry people on our way to our homes where we have dinner waiting for us, and not really seeing that there is a need out there,” McIntosh said.
McIntosh has poured himself into volunteering. He served on the board of directors, and then as vice president and president. During his six years at the food bank, he worked on constructing a new kitchen that he says has the capability of providing 5,000 hot meals in an eight-hour period.
The kitchen cost $1.2 million to construct and, according to McIntosh, is the only commercial facility in the area with a generator that can be dedicated to respond in case of a disaster, such as the 2008 tornado that struck Weld County.
The 1,200-square-foot kitchen was completed in January. McIntosh and the board worked with nonprofit and government agencies, including El Pomar Foundation, to fund this project.
“The completed kitchen allows us to increase both the quantity and quality of the food we serve and will also allow us to partner with the community in new ways,” said Leona Martens, executive director of the Weld Food Bank. The food bank is one of eight nonprofits that will receive funding this year from the Northern Colorado Empty Stocking Fund.
“The food bank feeds more than 10,000 people per month in Weld County,” McIntosh said. “The last few years they have run about 7 million pounds of food through the food bank. That’s all distributed to (needy) people.”
Though only allowed to serve six years as a board member, McIntosh still volunteers regularly. “They do a fantastic job managing the funds and food they get and they are, in my mind, a premier organization,” McIntosh said. “For a nonprofit, they are fantastic. And the people are really truly giving, caring people. Their hearts are in the right place.”
The Weld Food Bank received the El Pomar Foundation Award for Excellence in 2002.
As McIntosh reflected on that 1-year-old and her birthday cake, he said, “That 1-year-old was not going to have a cake on her birthday, but she got it. There are people out there that can’t even afford a cake for their baby.”
