Eddie Wedelstedt has a soft spot for kids, a hard one for the federal government.

He puts kids in seats at professional sporting events in Denver and Los Angeles.

The federal government put him in prison – twice.

He found out the hard way that when the feds don’t get their cut, they get very upset. He did 10 months of minimum security in Florence in 2006 after he copped a plea to mail fraud and tax evasion.

Eddie was the self-proclaimed “porn king,” who at his peak owned 80 adult bookstores across the nation.

As part of his plea agreement, Eddie turned over three of his businesses in Texas to the federal government, plus a lot of money.

That’s one side of “Eddie W.” or “Crazy Eddie” – just a couple of his many nicknames.

“Every name in the world they’ve called me,” he said Tuesday over lunch at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House.

Here’s another side of the guy: In 1990, after he met the late Chopper Travaglini, the former Denver Nuggets trainer, he founded Eddie’s Kids, a nonprofit that provides young people with tickets to the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Rapids and Mammoth, Los Angeles Kings and Chivas, the soccer club.

Early on, at a Nuggets game, Chopper stood up, pointed to Eddie’s young guests and told all around him, “There’s Eddie’s Kids.” The foundation’s motto is: “Every kid deserves a sporting chance.”

Between bites of a salad, Eddie quoted statistics about broken marriages and the number of kids being raised by a single parent.

“They don’t get the attention,” he said. “These kids don’t have a prayer unless we step in and help them. We need to give these kids a shot. It’s not the game. It’s an evening of entertainment.”

He recalled the story of a 17-year-old who went to a game and asked a nearby adult, “Pardon me, sir. What is that?”

“He was pointing to the cotton candy,” Eddie said. “Here he was 17 years old and he’d never seen cotton candy before.”

The adult sprung for the cotton candy for the kid.

Eddie’s voice sounds like a cement mixer at full spin.

He has always been free with his money. He tips everybody. At Del Frisco’s, he tipped the coat check girl, even though he didn’t check his coat.

During lunch, his cell phone kept ringing.

“Gotta take this. It’s from home,” he said.

“Sorry, gotta take this. It’s my lawyer,” he said another time.

As he talked on the phone, he rocked back and forth in his chair. “I had a bad back as a kid,” he said. “Rocking gives me a lot of comfort.”

Eddie, 66, grew up in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. He started his own business when he was 10 – a first-class car wash and wax for farmers.

“They get their cars cleaned once, twice a year,” he said. “But when they wanted it done, they wanted it done right.”

He dropped out of high school and joined the Air Force. After he got out in 1963, he opened a nightclub and worked in a factory.

“Then I met some of your people,” he said.

I presume he meant people of Italian heritage, as I have no relatives in Wisconsin, or at least none who ask me for money.

After the meeting with his new business associates, Eddie started producing adult porn films – no kiddie stuff.

“The girls got paid a guaranteed amount,” he said. “The guys didn’t get paid. They got movies, which turned out to be more than the girls earned, because they sold for $80 to $100, which was big money in those days as it was all underground.”

Then his associates asked him to go to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“There was a guy who owed some money,” Eddie said. “They sent me to see if we could work something out.”

So Eddie worked it out, staying in Iowa to open an adult bookstore. “I opened stores as I was going along. I had stores in North Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois.”

Then came a Supreme Court decision that said local decency standards ruled, so a lot of guys went to jail or sold out to Eddie.

“From ’71 to ’79, I had a lot of trouble with the feds,” he said. “It was ugly. I guess I was too big, too flashy.”

He certainly didn’t keep a low profile. He invested in more legitimate businesses – dinner theater, a semi-pro football team. And he supported local schools.

He moved to the Denver area in 1990.

He said the tanking economy has hurt his foundation.

“I’ll be down 20,000 tickets this year,” he said. “We’ll still put 40,000 kids in seats this year. I’ll guarantee 20,000 next year out of my own pocket if I have to. I’ve got that covered.”

He’s semi-retired now, working as a retail business consultant.

He has another job he could do if he really needs one.

When Eddie was in Florence, he didn’t have a prison job, and then he got one.

“A guard came up to me one day and said, ‘I need a favor. I need you to handle the mail.’ “