A 50/50 raffle at pro sports games was meant to help kids. Thousands of dollars vanished.

DENVER – Nearly 100 nights a year, thousands of dollars in cash poured into a room the size of a broom closet in downtown Denver’s Ball Arena.

Each night, Randy Kanai collected the cash and stashed it in a safe.

The money came from the charity 50/50 raffle held for a decade at Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Mammoth and Colorado Rapids home games. As the state-certified raffle manager, it was Kanai’s job to ensure the money reached its intended recipients.

Half the jackpot went to the winner. The other half was supposed to go to charity – primarily the Colorado Amateur Hockey Association, the nonprofit USA Hockey governing body that regulates the sport in the state. Kanai was its president.

The money could have been used to offset the costs of a notoriously expensive youth sport, in which ice rental, equipment and travel costs routinely exceed $10,000 a year for a single child. But instead of going to the hockey nonprofit and its member teams and leagues, a USA TODAY investigation found that 1 in 3 dollars the raffle raised from late 2016 through 2022 was misspent or remains missing.