Sunday, May 7, 2006 | 9:06 a.m.
Let them eat coffee cake - and muffins, cinnamon buns, doughnuts, bagels and other assorted pastries.
It might not be the most nutritious meal the Las Vegas homeless get, but local nonprofit organizations that benefit from a small food recovery program operated by a UNLV adjunct professor and three of his students say they are grateful.
In less than a year, the collegians' efforts have earned public recognition and have provided about 1,500 day-old breakfast items a week from Starbucks coffee shops to the needy who use the services of four local charities.
"We're not the solution to the problem - we're less than one percent of the answer," said Martin Dean Dupalo, who teaches political science part time at UNLV. "Our goal is to open up a large supply of goods to nonprofits - goods that currently are being trashed."
Small groups like Dupalo's have done what they can over the years to rescue good but outdated food that otherwise would be thrown away. But efforts to create a major recovery from places like the buffets of hotels have failed, experts say, because of logistics that include health issues, liability and manpower.
Because no one has yet figured out a cheap way to recover large amounts of prepared food - and do it safely so that the hotels' aren't hit with lawsuits resulting from allegations of food poisoning - the uneaten food from resorts has long been donated to R.C. Farms in North Las Vegas to feed its pigs.
Local homeless activists lament that that is by far the region's most comprehensive food recovery program - one that has led some to observe that area farm animals often eat better than Las Vegas' homeless.
"This (food recovery) is a big, complex issue that has been addressed for at least the last nine or 10 years I know of here in Southern Nevada," said Salvation Army spokesman Charles Desiderio.
"It's all logistics. How do you move the food safely from the casino buffet to a feeding agency? There has to be people working at both ends - restaurant workers to safely pack it in containers and nonprofit workers to transport it in refrigeration trucks to warehouses with large refrigeration units."
Dupalo's crew has found a way around that roadblock.
"Without refrigeration trucks, we have to do pickup and transport at the same time," said Dupalo, who has been recognized locally and nationally for his efforts to help the poor, including starting a similar food rescue program at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission. "We call it 'just-in-time delivery.' "
Dupalo, 39, and his students - Jose Miranda, Melanie Coffee and Priscilla Primm - go to Starbucks coffee shops at night and collect their unsold pastries.
They then take the food to U.S. Veterans and the Key Foundation, both military veterans assistance groups; the Greater New Jerusalem Church; and Safe House Inc., a family counseling center. The charities serve the food to their clients the next morning.
Since the program's kickoff on July 29, more than 40,000 pastries and an undetermined amount of ground coffee beans have been delivered to area charities through that one operation.
The food rescue program started by chance. Miranda, a 28-year-old student and Air Force technical sergeant, approached Dupalo after class one day and asked how he could get involved in community service volunteerism. The two sat down at a Starbucks on Flamingo Road and brainstormed ways Miranda could help the poor that would not conflict with his military obligations.
The subject of what Starbucks did with its day-old pastries came up. They contacted the company's corporate office, which gave them the OK to take the day-old pastries from about a dozen local shops and give them to charities.
The gesture was not unique for that company.
Sara Fleury, president of BJC, an Arizona-based public relations firm that represents Starbucks, said that in 2005 Starbucks made "in-kind and product donations totaling $7.4 million."
The local organizations that benefit from Starbucks' decision to not toss their old but still consumable food in the Dumpster say that such donations are a godsend in the wake of ever-diminishing federal funding for their programs.
"All of us nonprofits are frustrated when federal funds are cut because they affect our direct services like food," said Myrna Pili, acting site director for U.S. Veterans, which operates a 122-bed shelter for homeless veterans at 525 E. Bonanza Road.
"Therefore, any donation we get from the community, especially food, is big for us."
Pili is among those who question why Las Vegas homeless advocates and others have not figured a way to get around the problems related to having a comprehensive food recovery program that would address the needs of her organization and many others.
"In Las Vegas we have a plethora of resources, yet we are not utilizing them - at least not for food," Pili said. "We need to get the commercial end a little more involved. Things can change with more awareness."
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