Clarksville, N.Y. (WNYT) – It’s a well-run Thanksgiving operation, and a lot goes into it.

The Albany County Sheriff’s Thanksgiving dinner is going to feed hundreds of people all over the region.

Last year, Sheriff Craig Apple’s holiday operation expanded by a lot because Equinox stopped delivering meals.

This year, they knew it would be big again. People are struggling. The cost of everyday items has gone up.

The day began with finding out the ovens had gone down, so they did a quick pivot and brought in a huge roaster to continue the day.

“We started cooking Saturday and finished a lot of it up and then today we heated it up, packaged, and served it up by police cars, ambulances, you name it,” said Sheriff Apple. “We had a lot of volunteers this year come back into the program, like civilian drivers that wanted to help out and just give back to the community, so it’s been great. We’ve got about 50 staffers today.”

It’s Commander Joseph Lowry’s first year volunteering here.

“It’s a huge effort, from the kitchen to the bagging to deliveries and pickups, a big operation,” he said.

They ended up sending out close to 2,000 meals in less than six hours.

For the Albany County Sheriff’s department, this is also a team-building activity.

“It is, and we’re all here with the same goal. And we’re all enjoying it,” said Commander Lowry.

“We like to give back to the community,” said Sheriff Apple. “This is a great day for camaraderie for the staff as well and giving back to the communities that we police every day. We enjoy it and there’s a need out there, a huge need. More people have called us this year that are just literally starving for a meal. We’ve got as far west as Fulton County, Montgomery area, as north as Washington and Warren, we’ve hit Rensselaer, Greene, saturated our county.”

Donations from Sysco, Ginsberg, Capital Produce, Old World Provisions, and Hill and Markes helped make this effort possible.

A team from Delmar Rotary arrived to pick up bags of meals for delivery.

“It sounded like they needed volunteers, so we said we’ll do it, sure,” said Tom Burdick. “We’re delivering 58 meals, there are four cars, and we’ve got a bunch of volunteers in the cars to deliver meals today.”

“We’re part of Delmar Rotary, we’re Rotarians, that’s just what we do. We volunteer and we pitch in when we can.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by other volunteers.

“It just feels good,” said Commander Lowry. “It’s the right thing to do.”