By Rosalind Bentley

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Most mornings Anthony Delgado is out of his Dunwoody home by 4:30. He walks out to his red and white Dodge van, so old and battered he has to start it up with a turn of some pliers.

Delgado says a prayer that it will keep moving until his day’s work is done. There are so many deliveries to make, so many people in need.

“If Anthony is able to deliver food that day there is a joy in the faces of families who can make good meals for their children,” wrote Jean Thornton of the Community Action Center food bank. Thornton nominated Delgado as one of the AJC’s 2010 Holiday Heroes.

He’s a man who does not seem to have much. But in so many ways he considers his life rich and full.

For the past three years Delgado has been feeding working families, the unemployed and the homeless through his one-man nonprofit, “My Brother’s Keepers Reaching Out” (www.mybrothers-keepers.org). Walk into his garage and, well, it isn’t so much a garage as it is a food pantry. Freezers full of meat, rolls of toilet paper and packages of diapers on shelves, refrigerators packed with vegetables, fruit and juices.

Grocery stores donate most of it, some of it Delgado is able to purchase in bulk through donations to his modest charity. Some of it is a little past its prime, still usable but not saleable. But the families who come to Delgado do not seem to mind. And neither do the charities that Delgado provides with crates of food. This is a lifeline that is helping them to hold on.

“These are the working poor, people who work 40 hours a week and can barely pay their bills, let alone groceries,” Delgado said.

It wasn’t so long ago that the 54-year-old had given up on himself. For 40 years, Delgado pushed the limits of his body, of his relationship to his family, and the law. After getting out of the Marines at 21, Delgado struggled. He worked security at hotels to make a living, he said. He liked to have a good time and he liked the fast life even more.

Soon he was working in “collections,” as he puts it, and not for any legal entity. He drank to excess and started smoking crack. In the early 1980s he shot a man in the leg over money in Detroit and wound up in prison for five years, he said.

His immediate family wanted nothing to do with him. And when he got out of prison he was still lost to drugs and crime. By 2002, one of the only places he found welcome was with a distant cousin in Duluth. But he couldn’t kick his habit and his cousin threw him out.

Homeless, he slept in parks and shelters until one day a couple at the Greyhound Bus Station in Atlanta asked him if he was a veteran. He said yes, and they told him that he might find help through the Veterans’ Administration. “I believe those people were angels put in my path,” Delgado said.

Delgado went to the VA and was put into rehab. In time he found a church, got involved and got baptized. Through the encouragement of his pastor he found legitimate work as a quality control representative for a telecommunications company. And even after the company was taken over and Delgado was laid off, he knew he’d turned a corner.

He looked back on all the years he wasted. Then he looked forward and saw a future in which he could help others not walk down that same dark road. He started My Brother’s Keepers and began to fill up his garage. He reaches up to 100 families a week. He works every day now, except for Sunday mornings when he’s in church. That’s when he fuels up for what he needs to make it through the week. His family, he said, is finally proud of him.

“When I gave up, that’s when God picked me up,” Delgado said. “But you’ve got to initiate something on your side too.”

AJC Holiday Heroes 2010

For the second year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has selected a group of metro Atlanta residents to honor as Holiday Heroes, members of our community who, often at their own expense and without fanfare, do what they can to help others. Thirteen winners were selected from among dozens of worthy nominees. Besides having their stories told in the AJC and on ajc.com, this year’s Heroes will also be featured on radio station B98.5 FM, and each will receive a $250 gift card donated by the Buckhead Life restaurant group.