Craig Elford

After spending almost 40 years in sales and technical sales leadership positions in the telecommunications industry with AT&T and Sprint, I retired as Area Director of Enterprise Business and Public Sector Sales for the Midwest Region where my organization had responsibility for $800M in annual revenue. I served two terms on the Board of Trustees (Chair and Vice Chair) and Church Council for the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection managing a $26M annual budget. I also served on the Finance Committee, as Building Committee Chair for the Spiritual Retreat Center, on the Infrastructure Committee for the Leawood campus, and founded and lead the Traffic Ministry from 2004 to 2025. I feel blessed to be part of the Always & Furever family since May 2019, and absolutely love volunteering as the Pup Transport Coordinator and as a Freedom Driver where I have the responsibility to recruit drivers and organize the logistics for Freedom Rides and Furever Family Rides to start the journey for these beautiful, sweet pups to a new and better life. This has involved organizing freedom rides for over 4,300 pups to date involving so many amazing and committed freedom drivers and personally driving an average of 45,000 miles per year transporting over 2,800 pups to date.

I was really drawn to Always & Furever due to the focus on helping the pups overlooked by other rescues – the old dogs, sick dogs, abused dogs, abandoned and unwanted dogs – to provide them a loving environment where they know nothing but love, care, compassion, patience, kindness, and happiness. It is truly a blessing to volunteer with so many amazing people as part of the A&F family who are so passionate and committed to provide these poor, sweet, innocent pups the love and care they so deserve. We have adopted two beautiful pups from A&F and Ripley and Sydney are well loved members of our family.