That crisis prompted Reardon, 49, to sell his partnership in his fast-paced California company, move across the country to settle into an aging Grange Hall in Dover-Foxcroft, and dedicate his life not only to feeding the hungry but also to teaching them to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

"I’ve had my success, I felt it, and I enjoyed it," Reardon said recently. "Now I’m working with the people and helping them achieve their own level of success."

Reardon founded the Social Advancement of Virtues Endowment, or SAVE Virtues, a nonprofit organization that feeds the hungry with donated and solicited foods from throughout the country. What is different about the organization, however, is that it also serves to network food pantries throughout the Northeast to share knowledge and resources, and it trains and provides mentoring services so the hungry can improve their lives both socially and economically.

Reardon, who draws no salary from the organization, donates his time, talent and retirement funds to help operate the organization.

SAVE Virtues mirrors a successful retraining program the Department of Defense adopted in California when the department downsized by more than 1,000 people, according to Reardon. He said he was taking a proven program — one deemed the most outstanding economic development program in California in the 1990s — and was applying it in Maine.

While helping the poor has always been part of his makeup, it wasn’t until Reardon took a three-month sabbatical from his business, Corporate Strategies Group Inc. of San Diego, an international management consulting firm that helps businesses grow and profit, that he identified his second career.

Reardon said his sabbatical took him to Maine where he began hiking south on the Appalachian Trail to contemplate his future. He said that until that point, he had done everything that was expected of him: He was college-educated, ran a successful business, traveled the world, had friends in high places and enjoyed a high-class life. "I had reached fulfillment, but I kept asking myself, ‘Where’s the enjoyment coming for me?’" he said.

"I really loved the mental stimulation with the corporate arena, but my heart was with the entrepreneur," Reardon said.

When Reardon reached Mount Katahdin’s pinnacle, he had his "field of dreams moment," he said. He said it was then he decided he would spend the rest of his life helping those less fortunate in Maine.

A real estate search led Reardon to the hulking Grange Hall, a building constructed in 1904 in a barn raising by the town. Reardon purchased it, parked his Jaguar out front, moved his belongings to the second floor, and began making improvements to the first and second floors.

Reardon, who still does some private consulting, eventually will move his belongings to the third floor of the building because the second floor will be used extensively for training. He is building a kitchen on the second floor so he can teach food cupboard and pantry clients how to prepare and cook nourishing meals.

"We believe the greatest impact to strengthen communities is to strengthen people," Reardon said. "All of our programs are designed to get people off the food lines and unemployment lines, making them productive for themselves and their communities."

Reardon said Maine has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country. Yet "we have a brain drain because we don't give them hope or opportunity here in Maine, and so my kind of program is to bridge that gap." Standing on the first floor of the Grange Hall on a recent day, Reardon extended his hand to boxes filled with groceries from fruit drinks to bags of rice that crowded the countertops. In his dress shirt and pants and penny loafers, Reardon looked out of place. Smiling, he said his attire gets him past corporate doors.

"I have a special talent of going into corporations and convincing them to donate food and clothing," he said. Those visits are expected to help bring $9 million in food to the area in the next 12 months, he said.

While he has been able to solicit some transportation to move the donated items, the organization is still in desperate need of more transportation. Reardon's organization pays for mileage, tolls and gasoline. "We have more food than we can bring in," he said. "For every $1 donated, we're able to distribute $30 worth of food."

Locally, Reardon also motivates businesses to give of their time. He asks businesses to become mentors to the pantry's clients or allow them to job-shadow.

Reardon's enthusiasm for his work is spreading as he had hoped.

"His infectious enthusiasm for what he does, it just makes it hard not to gravitate to him and not help him," Al Hunt of Guilford said recently.

Hunt and his wife, Laurel, who volunteer for the organization, will operate a mobile pantry from their Guilford home at 93 Blaine Ave. starting from noon to 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26. The mobile unit, donated by a soda company and filled by Reardon's organization, then will be open the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. The mobile unit will augment what is offered on alternating weeks at the food cupboard in Guilford United Methodist Church.

Reardon is hopeful others will follow the lead of the Hunts and will find that if you "give more than you get, you'll receive more than you need."
"This content originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the Friday, October 26, 2007 edition of the Bangor Daily NEWS and is used here with permission."