Outside the Jeffco Action Center, a nonprofit in Lakewood that provides free food, clothing and financial aid to community members, the line is already coiling back toward the parking lot. This is a place people come for help, but it’s not a place anyone associates with the tidy, two-story homes and landscaped yards just a few miles away.
As Mark, an electrician, and his wife, Lauren Walter, a dental hygienist, walk up to the Jeffco Action Center, Lauren pulls the sleeves of her North Face jacket down over her hands, a nervous habit she’s developed in the last few months. This is their first time.
For the last decade, they have done, as Lauren says, “everything you’re supposed to do.” They saved. They bought a home in Arvada in 2017. They have two kids in public school…