AUBURN – One of Maine’s “angels” died Wednesday.

JoAnn Pike, the woman who took a morsel of food and turned it into a meal that fed thousands, succumbed to cancer. She was 62.

Pike was a native of Kansas and a former Dominican nun who taught third-grade classes in the Twin Cities for years.

She was best known, though, as the founder of the Good Shepherd Food-Bank.

Friends said Pike embraced a simple lesson taught to her by her mother, Lidwina Engel See, who believed “it is a shame to waste good food.”

Pike acted on her mother’s wisdom in 1981 when she created the food bank. She first operated it from her Court Street home, then expanded to downtown Lewiston and finally moved to a huge, modern warehouse off the Maine Turnpike in Auburn.

As the story goes, her mission to feed others grew from her own needs.

With two toddlers at home in 1980, she and her husband started making nocturnal visits to trash bins servicing area grocery stores. They’d rescue heads of lettuce, hunks of cheese and other edibles that might not look store-shelf fresh, but were still fine as food. The salvage would feed her family as well as others in the couple’s prayer group.

Soon, she said in an interview with the Sun Journal in 2000, “It became an addiction; it was just so ingrained.”

She created the Good Shepherd Food-Bank next, storing and distributing crates of bananas and boxes of bullion cubes from the front room of her Court Street home. Demand and donations both grew, prompting the operation to move to rented warehouse space in the old Continental Mill in Lewiston.

By 1983, she and those helping her secured a commitment from Hannaford Bros. supermarkets that resulted in the chain sending truckloads of discarded groceries to the food bank.

“I can’t imagine another situation where one person has done so much for so many,” said Hannaford CEO Ron Hodge in February when he joined 300 others in honoring Pike on the day she formally retired as the Good Shepherd’s leader.

The truckloads from Hannaford still come daily, but now the dented cans and broken boxes of pasta and cereal are routed to the food bank’s $3 million warehouse that bears Pike’s name.

That same day, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins joined via videotape in saluting Pike.

“She showed us all how to invest in the human spirit,” said Collins. She’s “one of Maine’s angels.”

Later, weakened by the disease that would soon claim her life, Pike nevertheless managed to flash the warm smile she was so well-known for. And with her eyes sparkling behind her glasses, she looked out at those who were honoring her and told them simply, “I love every one of you.”

Good Shepherd’s chairman, Scott Konecny, said the agency will carry on in Pike’s spirit.

The food bank, he said, “will continue to work toward her vision of a state where no one has to worry about how to feed themselves or their family, and no child will ever have to go to bed hungry.”