Risk Pays Off Big for Restaurant and Student

When the beer and produce distributors who deliver to Godfather’s Pizza in Clairemont Mesa first met Vince Provenzano, they were a bit nonplussed when Vince approached to touch their arms and rub their stomachs.

Not to worry, store manager Melissa Barnes told them; just push his hand away gently but firmly. They’d soon get over their initial concern, just as she had after learning about the way a deaf and autistic person uses touch to find out about new things and people.

In fact, Barnes and district manager Steve Allen became so comfortable with Vince that last month they hired the 17-year-old as a permanent, part-time employee to set up the restaurant’s salad bar each morning--without having a teacher or aide from his special school program there to oversee his work.

The move was an unusual step beyond the already-successful school “workability” program in which students such as Vince, in special education classes at San Diego city schools and other districts, are placed in temporary, part-time jobs with willing employers around the county--but with constant supervision from the educational system and usually without pay.

“I told Melissa (Barnes) that we should give it a try,” Karen Miller, a teacher in the deaf and multihandicapped program at Madison High School, said after Godfather’s asked whether Vince could continue working after the school program, with its supervision, ended for the summer.

“If it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t work out. But I felt it was worth the risk.”

A deaf and autistic individual often has little or no awareness or interest in socialization or other people, and, without extensive therapy and special education, lives in mental isolation.

As a way to help Vince in the transition to a regular job, manager Barnes learned some sign language--such as how to say “work faster,” “good job!” “what’s wrong?” “calm down,” and “thank you!”--as well as “wrong!” when she discovers Vince pilfering a tomato while placing the various food crocks on the bar.

Now, the husky teen-ager arrives promptly at 8 a.m. four mornings a week, outfitted in a red Godfather’s polo shirt and matching baseball cap, punches his time card on the kitchen clock, rolls a cart full of ice, salad greens, vegetables and dressings out of the refrigerator, and begins the job of setting up the salad bar. After finishing the bar, he helps fold pizza boxes and prepares tables before Madison aide Arinn Sherwood, who has become a special friend for Vince, picks him up for lunch and takes him to an afternoon recreation program.

“It’s been fantastic,” Sally Provenzano, Vince’s mother, said of Godfather’s willingness to put her son on its payroll at $4.25 an hour. Although she confesses to nervousness when Miller first broached the idea to her, Provenzano now sees the part-time work as a major step toward giving Vince a greater chance to be independent.

“I’ve always had high expectations for him, but he has difficult emotions to handle at times in terms of social skills, aggression--I didn’t want him in a risk situation, and I thought that, if he were at Godfather’s (alone), I would end up sitting out in the parking lot and watching him through the window all day.”

But her worries proved unfounded, she said. She knows Vince enjoys his job, both because he will break into a wide grin when asked about it and because at home he loves to watch a video for hours on end that a friend made of him working the salad bar.

Store manager Barnes said that Vince’s employment has not only been good for the restaurant but also for her and other employees, changing their way of looking at disabled persons.

A year ago, Barnes never would have imagined having someone like Vince working without constant monitoring, she confessed.

“But now, he’s just a normal person to me who simply needs more care.”

Vince, similar to many autistic individuals, can become upset when his normal routine is disrupted--pounding the wall with his fists or making grunting sounds--and, in such cases, Barnes “signs” him to calm down or writes out a message on a pad for him to read. When she first asked him to put ashtrays on tables, in addition to salad bar and table preparation, he became upset at the change, she said. But, after a day or so, he settled into the additional task with no further trouble.

Miller praised Barnes for “becoming another person for Vince to trust.”

District manager Allen would like to see more businesses sign up with such school district programs but said that employers must “feel good about it from the start” in order to make it succeed. He himself acknowledged having a few qualms in the past when Vince once suddenly gave him a big hug and smacked him on the back.

Miller cautioned that greater emphasis on allowing more disabled students such as Vince to hold unsupervised jobs depends both on the individual student and a particular business.

But the potential is there, she said. In Vince’s case, the greater independence will pay off for Vince in allowing him a greater choice of job opportunities after he finishes high school next year, said Miller, a former vocational counselor for the disabled in Ohio. Most disabled adults similar to Vince find work only in supervised or sheltered programs.

“This really improves his future,” Miller said.