Christopher Gardner, left, his daughter Jacintha, and son Christopher arrive at the premiere of the film The Pursuit of Happyness in Los Angeles in 2006. The movie is based on Gardner’s rags-to-riches life story. Yesterday, he was in Rhode Island to raise money for the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS MATT SAYLES

PROVIDENCE — Christopher Gardner’s life story of homelessness to riches catapulted him to fame. He’s the subject of the Hollywood blockbuster The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith, and a best-selling author whose retelling of his remarkable journey fetches $50,000 an appearance.

But the guy knows how to make money for others, too.

“Do me a favor, lock all the doors, lock all the people in here,” he said yesterday over an applauding luncheon crowd of 750 gathered at the Rhode Island Convention Center for the 25th anniversary of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. The audience had just given him a standing ovation at the end of his speech, in which he defined his biggest success as being a responsible father.

“We are doing a fundraiser today, aren’t we now?” he asked. “To help feed some folks, who maybe for whatever reason, ain’t as fortunate as some of us has been?”

Dressed in a gray business suit and a peach-colored shirt opened at the collar, Gardner, now a millionaire who runs his own investment firm, offered $10,000 to the food bank. Then in a comical exchange, he challenged several big supporters of the food bank to match him.

“Where the folks from Hasbro at?” he said, scanning the darkened tables from the lighted stage. “Don’t hide. Hasbro, by the way, the makers of the Rubik’s Cube. I know how much money I made for you,” he joked, a reference to the scene in the movie when Will Smith takes the game out of the hands of a frustrated stockbroker and arranges the colored sides correctly in seconds.

“Can you match me on ten grand?” Gardner asked.

“Yeah,” replied a man from the Hasbro table.

The crowd laughed and applauded but Gardner wasn’t yet done.

What about Textron? he asked. And Whole Foods? Shaw’s supermarkets?

In a matter of minutes, Gardner had raised another $50,000 for the food bank.

“No one knew he was going to do that,” Andrew Schiff, executive director of the food bank, said afterward. “He wanted to make sure we got back the $50,000” the food bank spent for his appearance.

At 54, Gardner’s “strange new life” as he described it — a life crafted now into its own brand — resulted from a mixture of determination, hard work and incredible luck.

He grew up in Milwaukee never knowing his father. His stepfather abused him and reminded him often that “I ain’t your daddy, you don’t have no daddy.”

Gardner said he promised himself at the age of 5 that “when I become a parent, my child would know his father.”

After a stint in the Navy, Gardner went to San Francisco and took a job as a medical supply salesman. Soon he married a woman who graduated from dental school. Money was tight; his wife hadn’t yet passed her boards. The couple had a son, Chris Jr. But they had a roof over their heads.

He reached a turning point one day when he met a man trying to find a place to park his red Ferrari. Captivated by this image of wealth and success, Gardner told the man he could have his parking space but first he had to answer two questions: What do you do? And how do you do that?

The man, who would become his mentor, was a stockbroker who made $80,000 a month.

Gardner’s next step was a bit “cavalier” he admits. “I quit my job thinking I was going to Wall Street.”

“Unemployment,” he dead-panned, “will not help your relationship.”

During the day Gardner spent time with his new stockbroker friend, learning the business. During free hours he cut grass, collected rubbish, learned roofing and house painting to make ends meet at home. Then everything fell apart.

San Francisco police arrested him for not paying $1,200 in parking tickets. It was a Friday. By the time he got out days later, his wife was gone with their year-old son.

“It tore me to pieces,” he said, wondering: “Did my son know I didn’t leave him like my father left me?”

Gardner struggled on. In 1981 he passed his licensing exam on his first try. In 1982, he finally was accepted into a training program at Dean Witter’s investment office in San Francisco for a meager stipend. The situation grew worse, however, when his ex-wife showed up one day with Chris Jr. and said, “I can’t do this anymore. It’s your turn,” and left their son with him.

Gardner said he was living at a boarding house which prohibited children.

“Just like that,” he said, “we were homeless.”

People often think it is drugs or alcohol that cause homelessness, Gardner said. For him “life” proved just as lethal.

For a year, Gardner said, his life was spent making 200 cold calls a day, trying to drum up investors, while his son stayed at hastily arranged day care. At night he worked trying to find a place for them to stay. Sometimes it would be cheap hotels or a shelter. But sometimes, when he couldn’t get to the shelter before its doors closed, the pair would sleep in a locked bathroom at an Oakland subway station.

“There were days I chose to stay on that phone” and make money, Gardner said, “whether it meant missing the shelter or not.”

Gardner said sometimes people asked him why he just didn’t give his son to his mother to care for. “You know what,” he told the crowd yesterday. “That wasn’t my Momma’s baby. That was my baby.”

The audience applauded.

Gardner eventually began earning enough for an apartment and in 1983 he joined Bear, Stearns & Company. The job offer came from one of the general partners of the Bear, Stearns firm, Gardner said; an executive who had taken notice of him and his work ethic during visits to Dean Witter.

After becoming a top producer for the firm, Gardner left in 1987 to start his own company.

His son is now 27 and works for him. He also has a 21-year-old daughter who will graduate from college next month.

Gardner said one of his “residual hang-ups” from carrying all his possessions with him on the streets is “I can not throw a bag away.”

“Let me put all this in perspective for you,” Gardner said.

“Sony tells me a billion people around the world saw The Pursuit of Happyness. Who knew? The book, 25 weeks of The New York Times best sellers list … translated into 14 languages … Who knew?

“One person knew. And that was Dr. Maya Angelou. She told me, ‘Boy, this isn’t even about you. This is the story of every father who ever had to be a mother and every mother who ever had to be a father and everybody who ever had a dream that wouldn’t quit. This isn’t even about you.’ ”

Gardner said the movie is “great, book great, this is great. But the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life is to have broken the cycle of men who have not been there for their children.”

Gardner said he has raised a young man who knows that the “most important thing about being a man is being responsible.” And he has raised a daughter, too, who as a young woman, “understands how a man should treat her with respect.”

“I’m going to have influence on generations of offspring that I probably will never meet. But because I broke the cycle here, that is going to be my ultimate contribution.”

tmooney@projo.com