LONGMONT, Colorado >> For Anthony DeSousa, the owner of two pizza shops in Estes Park and Longmont, Colorado, feeding the hungry is personal. He grew up in poverty in New York and his dad was in jail for most of his life, leaving his mother to raise him and his two brothers.

“I know what it’s like to be a kid and starving, to check every cabinet in the house 15 times looking for food and never finding any,” DeSousa said.

Since the beginning of November, he has served about 300 free pizzas, hundreds of chicken and pasta dinners and distributed over 600 pounds of beans and rice to those who show their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits card or a federal worker ID during the record-long federal government shutdown.

DeSousa is part of an uptick in charitable donations and ac

See Full Page