EDIBLE: Two local heroes from the food world take on poverty and homelessness with insurmountable spirit.

Any restaurant manager can testify that when a bartender doesn’t report for duty, there are plenty of places he or she might go – including the beach, on a road trip or back to bed – before they go live on a sidewalk with no water.

That’s precisely what bartender Todd Sondgroth, age 29, of Baja Cantina in Carmel Valley – where the margaritas, “blackened” burritos and rosemary chicken enchiladas help people forget worldly cares – will do (again) on Oct. 19.

He conducted his first vigil of voluntary homelessness in 2013. Since then he’s launched Carmel-based nonprofit Change a Heart Foundation, now in its fourth year, logging 50 hours a week, mostly while his young family of five is asleep. (Another kid’s on the way in 40 days.)

So the day this issues hits the streets Sondgroth hits the streets too, with four friends but without food, water, shelter or money. Eight more will do so in San Jose.

Their immediate goal will be to survive without accepting anything except existing homeless services; they have allowed themselves one laptop for emailing campaign updates at the library, a few cell phones and the clothes on their backs. The eventual goal is to stay on the street until followers of their saga on Facebook and the CAHF website donate $100,000 total. (People can also text “Lovewins” to 797979.)

The Love Wins campaign aims to distribute funds to a range of local causes that include One Starfish (which serves homeless women with support and safe parking); Al and Friends (which feeds the homeless hot meals – more on that in a minute); and Spero Collaborative (which serves crisis-stricken communities). Panning back, CAHF will also direct funds toward victims of the laundry list of recent disasters (Houston, Vegas, Florida, Puerto Rico), in addition to (deep breath) funding water wells in Africa, a malnutrition center in Haiti, a restaurant run by ex-child soldiers in Uganda and construction of homes in the ghettos outside Tijuana, Mexico.

If that sounds like too much, it does to Sondgroth too. He concedes he’s probably taken on too much, but adds he’s seen too much – and he’s not thinking about all the disaster, murder and dictatorial chaos pressing in on us here and now.

He’s talking about poverty he witnessed across 15 non-religious missionary trips across four years, in places like Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, and more than anything, Haiti.

He watched workers called bayakou drop into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines that serve as the closest thing to a sewer and dump it into canals that run through the cities. He held dying kids. He met a 17-year-old girl whose mother shoved abortion pills down her throat when the mom discovered her daughter was pregnant. Hemorraging severely, the daughter gave birth the next day to a severely premature baby – who the (older) mother threw in a latrine to die. (The baby somehow survived, and lives with mom in the malnutrition center.)

He also revisited the wells they built on previous trips and swore to a small boy he’d drill that community its own.

“He smiled,” Sondgroth says. “You don’t forget that. Right now I view just about everything through my Haiti lens.

“I’ve been feeling this [Love Wins project] on my heart for quite some time now, but it wasn’t until that trip that I felt called to take massive action. I promised the malnutrition center we would take care of the next six months of their lease. Those are promises I will keep.” (For more of his thoughts, what’s next for Change a Heart and how to help, visit mcweekly.com/edible.)

Pacific Grove’s Al Siekert, 74, knows Sondgroth and shares a mutual admiration, a compassion for homeless people and a passion for ways to help them. Siekert will be the first to tell you how much he admires Sondgroth’s “indomitable spirit”; Sondgroth says Sierkert’s “sheer will is unmatched.”

Longtime local caterer Siekert feeds his huge homeless gathering 8-9am every Sunday underneath the eucalyptus trees at Del Monte Beach, as he has for years. When theWine Country fires struck this month, and he was smacked with the images of block after block completely leveled, he knew he could help.

“Who could be more impacted by homelessness than 2,000 families that never expected to be hit by that?” he says.

He recruited donations from individuals and businesses across Monterey and Pacific Grove, a motherlode of Cowboy Sausage from Butch Francis and 60 pounds of bacon from Tony Baker of Baker’s Bacon, and set off in the E450 bus he brings to the beach for breakfast.

“We served a lot of people and a lot of clothing,” he says, dishing slabs of glazed bacon and Cowboy chili with eggs. “We had tremendous vitality on the edge of the Home Depot parking lot.”

He describes a fringe element who couldn’t turn to friends and family for shelter, similar to many in the Monterey area, “barely hanging on, looking for a magic star called ‘stable.’” (To help Al & Friends nonprofit – which received its IRS certification as this went to press – readers can mail checks to Al and Friends, P.O. Box 1022, Pacific Grove, CA, 93950, or simply come hang out down on the beach.)

I asked Sondgroth why he thinks food and restaurant types tend to help out in crisis. “I think they understand the struggle,” he says. “They know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck, to work 60 hours a week to get by. When it comes to helping others, they can relate.”

That gets at what he wishes he could give everyone. “I wish I had the ability to make people live in another’s shoes,” he says. “We’d extend more grace, patience, forgiveness, tolerance, right?”

QUICKBITES

• Ventana Big Sur opens in all its overhauled glory Friday, Oct. 20, under the leadership of Alila Hotel & Resorts, with a reinvented Sur House Restaurant and fresh menus from Exec Chef Paul Corsentino doing their own soft-open.
• Participating wineries and other wine-loving businesses throughout California are donating a portion of proceeds during October to support those affected by the devastating Northern California wildfires. Look for the hashtag #CAWINESTRONG and visit montereywines.org/cawinecountrystrong for more.
• What’s better than gourmet-grade food and drink from the likes of Epsilon Greek, new Silver Tide in Seaside, Basil Seasonal Dining, Mad Otter Ale, Crema and Scheid Wines? When it’s free. So it goes as a launch party celebrates the Weekly’s annual Food + Drink glossy – see insert, this issue – 5-7pm Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Press Club on Fremont.
• Elkhorn Slough Brewing, Discretion Ales, Peter B’s Brewpub, Golden Road and North Coast Brewing are among the dozen craft producers at the first Blues & Brewsat Laguna Seca 4pm Saturday, Oct. 21 ($25 in advance). See p. 35. Carmel Valley Ranch Wine Harvest Weekend is here: A Swing 2016 reserve Pinot Noir release dinner kicks things off 6-9pm Friday, Oct. 20 ($125), featuring Exec Chef Tim Wood’s family-style “eat-like-a-chef” dinner and Sommelier Mark Buzan curating eight wines. The Wine Experience Grand Tasting follows Oct. 21 with 12 outstanding family-owned valley wineries pouring ($95) and great snacks.
• King City’s farmers market spinoff La Cocina (The Kitchen) had an incredible first year 3-8pm Wednesdays across from King City High. Special Dia De Los Muertos edition Oct. 25 then last two weeks of the year follow.
• Cima Collina Winery does its Growers Dinner 7pm Saturday, Oct. 28, with Chef Jerome Viel manning the four courses to go with the single-vineyard-Pinot-centric selections from winemaker Annette Hoff Danzer, at their urban chic Marina winery ($75-$85, cimacollina.com).
• The city of Marina and Everyone’s Harvest Farmers Market now take food scraps at the 10am-2pm Sunday market on Reservation Road.
• William Shakespeare: ”Do not spread the compost on the weeds.”