Former Denver actor Rhonda Brown sent Todd Webster and his wife a big box of chocolates this past Valentine’s Day. The card read: “Thanks for saving my life.”

That was Todd’s whole thing, Brown said this week: “He was always saving the day.”

It was the pandemic. Brown was going through a tough time. She had just moved back to Denver and was starting over with her dog, Lola. Weekdays were for school. Weekends were for hanging out and watching football with Webster, his wife, Miriam, and his best friend, Ed Cord.

“I was at the absolute lowest point in my life,” said Brown, who had become isolated. “Todd and Ed left me a voice message that said: ‘You can keep blowing us off, but we’re not going to blow you off. And we would really appreciate a call back.’”

She called back. She went over. She found family.

“I was welcomed into that circle,” she said, “and it saved me.”

That’s the Todd Webster most everyone in the Colorado theater community knew.

In the late 1990s, Webster was taken in by an adjunct professor at the University of Denver who had just founded Curious Theatre Company. Over the next 25 years, Chip Walton says, Webster was all in, 100 percent.

“We always used to joke that Todd arrived 30 seconds late to the founding of Curious,” Walton said Saturday. “Over the years, Todd literally contributed in almost every single possible way to the growth and success of Curious – as an artist, a company member, a staff member, and an unflagging advocate for our work. He was always game for absolutely anything.

“I think we all would be hard-pressed to find many who contributed more over these past several decades to Curious than Todd. That’s how central he was to everything that we accomplished together.”

The Curious family, and by extension the larger local theater community, was gut-punched this week by word that Webster died May 5 of sudden complications from sepsis. He was 46.

Webster was born Oct. 5, 1977, to Tim and Debbie Webster in Albuquerque. He was president of his senior class at Albuquerque Academy and moved to Colorado in 1996 to study theater at DU. Webster had a sister, Allison Webster, and he dedicated a balcony seat at Curious’ home at the Acoma Center to his grandmother, Helen King.

But his Facebook family page also mentions a brother – Ed Cord. Not by blood. By boards. They even played brothers in Curious’ 2005 world premiere of a play called “The Dead Guy.” That’s where, Cord says, they became real brothers for life. A bond made public and permanent by Webster’s heartfelt declaration on Facebook.

Funny thing is, that was all Cord’s idea.

“Yeah, we were on a camping trip, and we were drinking, and I made him change me to his brother on Facebook,” Cord said with a chuckle. “That might have come as a surprise to his actual family.”

In Curious’ early years, Webster served as an actor, company photographer, marketing director, webmaster, graphic designer and everything in between, including most recently assisting on properties design – those are all the various things actors hold in their hands during the course of a play. In 2005, Webster won a Denver Post Ovation Award for co-creating the video accompaniment to “The Dead Guy.”

As an actor, Webster’s most significant roles at Curious included “Praying for Rain,” “The Rest of the Night,” “Fuddy Meers” and “The Dead Guy.” In 2004, he was part of a thrilling stage experiment called “columbinus,” a powerful collaboration with the visiting Washington, D.C.-based United States Theatre Project that explored both the Columbine High School massacre five years before and the pervading mindset of disaffected teenagers. In just one week, Webster and his castmates memorized and fully staged the entire first act.

But Webster also performed for other notable local companies including Germinal Stage-Denver, The Avenue, Firehouse and Paragon Theatre, where he took on perhaps his greatest acting challenge – as a deeply disturbed, sexually abused character named Baby in Jez Butterworth’s violently black British comedy “Mojo.”

“I just remember how effective he was at portraying this playfully menacing villain and feeling like anything could happen,” said another boards brother, Garret Glass. Especially because the role was so far from Webster’s true nature.

“It was impossible to not let your guard down around Todd because he made it so easy,” Glass said. “You never needed to impress him. Todd wasn’t the kind of guy you became friends with over time. From the moment you met him, you were in the club right away. That was Todd to a T.”

Cord and Webster were cast together in a 2007 farce called “Red Herring” by Firehouse Theater Company. It was such a kismet experience, four members of that ensemble then launched their own theater company, called Uncorked Productions. “We all just wanted to keep working together,” Cord said.

They bowed with “Closer,” Patrick Marber’s two-couple relationship drama, in 2008. That was Uncorked’s first and only production. And the last time Webster acted on a stage. After that, he focused on real-world responsibilities, specializing in marketing and design for a variety of companies including the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He served as Creative Director at WellBiz Brands from 2007-15 and at Hunter Douglas from 2015-24.

In 2017, Webster married Miriam Lynae Sybesma and created a family unit with their de facto children – two small mixed-breed dogs named Charlie and Bobbie. They called them “whoodles” – large poodles that kind of look like living stuffed animals.

“He was really happy with Miriam,” Cord said. “She was definitely the love of his life.”

If there is one short anecdote that can sum up a life, it is this one about Webster’s.

Brown was preparing to go onstage at Curious for a 2008 play called “End Days” when nature, as it does, took its natural course.

“It was curtain time, and there were no feminine products of any kind in the building,” Brown said with a laugh. “Absolutely nobody knew what to do – except Todd.”

Without hesitation, Webster took off running toward a nearby convenience store on Broadway. “And as he was leaving, I was out in the parking lot screaming to him, “Don’t forget, Todd: They have to be super plus!”

Webster was back within 4 minutes, she said, and the show soon went on. They both laughed about it for years.

“Todd would tease me by saying, ‘Rhonda won all the awards – but I saved the day!” Brown said.

And that’s exactly what he did.

It’s telling, said Glass, that as word of Webster’s death has spread this week, “People are absolutely devastated who haven’t even seen him in 20 years.”

They talk about his honesty and dependability and generosity and kindness and patience. “That frickin’ personality that just shines a light in the world,” said Cord.

That Webster was an actual member of the actual Optimist Club of Denver perhaps says it all.

But his ongoing struggles with alcohol and smoking, as they are for so many, were part of Webster’s story, too, and both no doubt contributed to his death. All of which has his friends struggling with what meaning to take from his shortened life.   

“When somebody dies like this, I think the message should be, ‘Let’s pay attention to what’s important in life rather than a bunch of (bleep),’” said Cord. “Because life is tenuous.

“I think we should all focus on how Todd cared for other people, and how he really enjoyed his life. If Todd could speak for himself, he would tell us all, ‘Hey, just be nice to people; just be kind.’”

Walton retired from Curious Theatre a year ago. What he’s now missing more than anything, he said, is that “Todd was a friend to me unlike any other. He was always there for absolutely anything that I needed, at any time.

“And honestly, I’m still trying to imagine my world without him in it.”

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday (May 15) at the Fairmount Funeral Home, 430 S. Quebec St., with a reception to follow. A gofundme has been started to help the family with medical and burial expenses. Memorial contributions also can be made to Curious Theatre’s emergency financial recovery campaign at curioustheatre.org/fundthefuture.