ASHEVILLE - Woodward "Woody" McKee is a conquerer — of tall mountains Many know him as a cab driver and the owner of Asheville Taxi Co. something that McKee said "just happened." "It wasn't my lifelong goal to be in the taxi business," McKee said over the phone from the tiny village of Tlachichilco He described the pile of mountain gear by his feet which he would soon use to climb the highest peak in Mexico as a symbol of how his life has changed since he hit rock bottom It also stands as a symbol of his drive to make things right "I tried to climb that mountain nine years ago and got altitude sick and didn't make it," he said noting he made the attempt with his father an otherwise healthy man who suddenly died of a heart condition three years ago "It's silly maybe — but it's one of those unfinished business things." Some know him as the bringer of food to shelters and community centers through Food Connection a nonprofit that rescues fresh yet unclaimed restaurant and catering meals destined for the landfill and ferries them to the tables of the underserved.   As a buyer and seller of large swaths of property When a 200-acre parcel needed highway access or environmental cleanup this time to conquer a political science degree he'd left half-finished in his 20s at UNC Chapel Hill and when I bottomed out — it's hard to even remember at that point — but in '09 I couldn't even get a job as a UPS box stacker." Turning 40 in college was a lonely experience sobriety was its own special kind of lonely until his friends called for rides after the bars closed there never seemed to be enough cabs at 2 a.m and he soon took a shift at a cab company "part out of desperation part out of curiosity," he said.  "I called up Checker Cab because it was the name I remembered and they said 'come over.' They basically handed me a set of keys as I walked in the door." The world that exists just behind the scenes in Asheville was an oft-illicit It was the most intensely weird experience of his life He liked it more than he could have imagined.  "I picked up all kinds of people I'd never run into in normal life," he explained. "A lot of it is carrying old ladies' groceries but at night it's totally crazy wide-open with partiers McKee bought a minivan with a mind to start his own taxi company now operates daily with roughly 70 people driving or dispatching all ferrying thousands of customers.  And now McKee is an instrumental cog in the machinations of solving local food insecurity McKee promised to donate his time — and sometimes the cleanliness of his cars — to Food Connections.   the service collects surplus food from often upper-end restaurants and caterers delivering it to shelters and services like the Veterans Restoration Quarters The service also works to keep food from becoming fodder for landfills where Food Connection rescued and delivered 15,000 meals to people in Western North Carolina.  Asheville Taxi has been delivering all of our food connections free of charge," Pate said estimating that half of the 65,000 fresh meals that Food Connection has rescued have been delivered by Asheville Taxi has been a catalyst of the Food Connection movement "These generous taxi drivers have literally kept tens of thousands of pounds of some of Asheville's finest food out of our local landfills," she said it was an obvious fix to a problem that needed a solution "It bothered me to think it wasn't getting done," he said "Who else is sitting around 11:15 on a Friday to pick up 10 trays of food and get it to East Asheville?" Asheville Taxi drivers pick up an estimated 400 pounds of food a week from Deerfield Retirement Community. High-quality food gets picked up on an almost-daily basis from the Grove Park Inn "Whoever it is will text us where they are a list of what they're donating and we'll send a car that can accommodate that much stuff which is sometimes a van or two vans," McKee said and we'll haul it down to wherever it's going." McKee pays the drivers who transport the food a regular fare He also foots the cleaning bill if necessary "Sometimes there will be a bunch of trays of cole slaw and that can be a mess," he noted.  Asheville Taxi dispatchers also contact donation recipients to make sure their doors are open figuring out where to put so much food can be a challenge.  we would take everything there without even thinking about it," McKee said a few times they've been full to capacity and can't take anymore." Western Carolina Rescue Mission on Patton Avenue generally has capacity but isn't always reachable late at night when drivers are out and about with food fares.  "When there are so many parties in Asheville and the Beloved House is full late at night we have drivers literally riding around with cabs full of food," Pate said Food Connections has some hesitation about taking on new donors.  A refrigerated space would help solve distribution issues for Food Connections but for now it's up to drivers to solve hunger in a very immediate and pressing way "It messes with your head if you don't eat well," he said you're going to get whatever's in front of you and there's no need for that to be Doritos when you're in a town where people are throwing away $250-a-plate meals Hopefully now they can eat scallops instead of Doritos." McKee knows well the challenge of living on the streets and only had three cars. Then a drunk driver hit one head-on in Kenilworth but it knocked out a third of his fleet.  he needed a new car and a new house in a tight rental market. "I was working 24 hours a day and didn't have the time to dig out. I couldn't find a new place my lease was up and I was broke — just cornered." McKee would couch surf or sleep in the park His time on the street was relatively short but he said the situation illustrates how precarious most people's lives really are.  a lot of McKee's taxi customers were Florida evacuees living in local shelters They didn't do anything wrong to get in that spot They just lived somewhere that got hit by a storm." met McKee while he was still in his party years McKee had recently moved to Asheville after getting a divorce and drank heavily "When he decided to put the bottle down he gained a new perspective on life and has definitely made a transition to more of a community-oriented person versus as selfish as we all were in those days," said Sabo.  Watching him build a business has been incredible especially with the rise of competition from Über But the first step after sobriety was a doozy he basically went from the top to the bottom and cleared out everything he owned," Sabo said "He was at the bottom and managed to go back to school and start a cab company with an old "It's hard to pull it together at first," McKee said from Mexico hours before attempting his Pico de Orizaba climb And about that mountain: refrozen glacier melt created a two-foot-thick layer of ice still attempted his climb on an alternate route that took him 17,500 feet up — but still 1000 feet from the top.  Tuesday was also the anniversary of his sobriety and that's also sort of a plodding thing," he said It's like climbing a mountain or running a business do the right thing and hopefully the path reveals itself." More about Food Connection at www.foodconnection.co. More about Asheville Taxi Co. at www.avltaxi.com.