‘Ready to work’: Those with disabilities find a variety of jobs across the Twin Cities

Cynthia Jo Erickson spent a recent Monday night in a fitful, sleepless haze, moved to literal tears by the prospect of working at a  popcorn store. Erickson, 68, doesn’t talk much about her disabilities, but she does talk about her nerves. Asked how she was feeling the next morning approaching her first day on the job at St. Paul’s Highland Popcorn, she shared her feelings without hesitation from the center seat of a work van: “I’m nervous! … First time!”

An hour later, she was mostly all smiles as she carefully measured powdered cheese for a giant tumbler and then wiped her work area clean under the patient direction of her job coach, Ryan Wright, 25, of St. Paul.

“So far, so good,” Erickson said. “I’m still nervous, but it’s going well. Ryan’s here, so we’re good.”

Founded in 1949 as United Cerebral Palsy of Greater St. Paul, and later dubbed Midwest Special Services, the St. Paul-based disability support organization now known as MSS has had a bit of a change of heart over its 75 years. Gone are the days when large corporations brought in remote controls needing new batteries, among other piecemeal work for day clients to assemble and disassemble in the organization’s warehouse-like common area on St. Paul’s East Side.

These days, MSS clients like Erickson, Jane Christenson, 60, and Sadiq Whidby, 26, all of St. Paul, board shuttle vans at the organization’s Ocean Street headquarters and roll out to community job sites once a week, filling orders at Highland Popcorn or operating as kitchen staff at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. Wright oversees small teams of workers as they empty dishwashers and measure out melted butter for the popcorn mixer.

Branching out personally, professionally

A population that would have been hidden from view years ago is branching out personally and professionally. For the past 10 years or so, the focus at MSS, increasingly, has been on placing the disabled in the community, whenever possible, to live in group homes, display their art in galleries or work a job site in person.

“They’re dedicated workers. They’re ready to work,” said Jenna Childs, the nonprofit’s program director. “For a number of years, the only work that was available to them was janitorial. And now we have jobs that are really in the front and center of people’s businesses.”

The goal, said Childs, is integration.

“I think it’s about people being recognized and accepted,” she said. “Do we have a lot of work to do? Certainly.”

Now spanning seven locations in St. Paul, Eagan, Minneapolis and elsewhere throughout the metro, the nonprofit — which is backed largely by Medicaid reimbursement — provides services and classes in cooking, studio art and even boxing to some 700 adults annually with down syndrome, on the autism spectrum or living with other developmental delays. The Ocean Street headquarters even hosts its own on-site ring through a partnership with the Rice Street Old School Boxing gym.

Christenson, one of the nonprofit’s chattiest and most high-functioning clients, recalled helping out at fast food restaurants like McDonald’s in high school. That was a literal lifetime ago. She started work at the nonprofit Highland Popcorn shop on Ford Parkway when shop owner Shamus O’Meara launched it in February, her first regular paying job in more than 40 years.

“This is as close to retail as I can get to,” said Christenson, who has been enrolled in MSS day services for nearly 20 years. “It’s hard for people with autism and disability to find jobs in a workplace. You go to a place and people say, ‘You’ve got a disability. You can’t do nothing.’ When (O’Meara) opened his door, he opened it to all kinds of people with disabilities.”

MSS has hosted a number of events throughout the year to mark its 75th anniversary, including a recent gala, as well as an art show at the Fresh Eye Gallery on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, which frequently hosts client art work.

Here’s a look at two mornings at two separate work sites in St. Paul.

University of St. Thomas

WHEN AND WHERE: Monday, Oct. 28, six MSS workers and a job coach at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

8:30 a.m.: Arrival. Sadiq Whidby, 26, who spent his teen years with a supportive foster family and lives with his legal guardian in St. Paul, is dropped off by the Metro Mobility bus at MSS and gets ready to wrap up his second month working in a cafeteria dish room at the University of St. Thomas.

9 a.m.: Rolling out. Wright drives the five men to St. Thomas, where they don gloves and aprons in the dish room of the Northsider, a St. Thomas cafeteria that opened in 2000 on Cleveland Avenue. “I pretty much have it down,” says Whidby, who once handled 230 to 240 dishes in a row. “I think my favorite would be unloading the dishes. I always count to help me remember how many I’ve unloaded. It’s something I choose to do.”

9:30 a.m.: Kitchen duty. Whidby silently empties clean dishes from a conveyor while the other four workers man their various kitchen stations. While others might mind the repetition of loading and unloading, he’s in his element. “It didn’t take too long” to learn his duties, he says later. “From the moment I first started working at St. Thomas, I knew it was the right job for me.”

11:15 a.m.: Lunch time. Whidby grabs a slice of margherita pizza and joins most of the other MSS workers in the lunch room, where students have begun piling in. The four men sit eating in silence, unfazed by the lunchtime din. One of the workers, Wright explains later, is almost completely non-verbal. Whidby is the strongest conversationalist when asked a direct question. “There are a number of people we support who don’t use words to communicate, may have complex medical needs, seizure disorders — and they are working alongside people without some of those barriers,” Childs said later.

11:45 p.m.: Back to work. The crew wash their hands in a wash station before returning to the job.

2 p.m.: Time to head back to MSS and eventually head home.

Highland Popcorn

WHEN AND WHERE: Tuesday, Nov. 19, four MSS workers and a job coach at Highland Popcorn in St. Paul.

8:30 a.m.: Boxing and nerves. Jane Christenson, 60, takes a Metro Mobility shuttle from her group home to the MSS Ocean Street headquarters, where she meets Cynthia Jo Erickson, whose stomach has been in knots in anticipation of her first day of work. Christenson, who has been mixing ingredients at Highland Popcorn since the shop opened, has no worries. She sometimes warms up for the day by stepping into the boxing ring. “It’s a good thing to get your frustrations out on,” Christenson said. “You can hit the bags and pretend it’s something that you’re mad at.”

9 a.m.: Roll out. Christenson, Erickson and two other workers board the MSS van, driven by Wright. It’s also Brad Schulenberg’s first day of work at Highland Popcorn, and he’s forgotten his lunch bag inside the MSS offices. Childs brings it out to Schulenberg, 38, who has been an MSS client for 15 years. How is everybody feeling? Christenson and Schulenberg offer a thumbs up, but Erickson says she’s still a bundle of nerves.

9:30 a.m.: Reunited with Goog. Craig “Goog” Applebaum — even his license plate carries the nickname his older brother gifted him in infancy — opens the door to Highland Popcorn on Ford Parkway and lets in Wright and the four MSS client-workers. Applebaum, whose great uncle Sidney Applebaum ran groceries throughout the Twin Cities, is the store’s only non-disabled employee. It took some cajoling for attorney and store owner Shamus O’Meara to convince “Goog” to give up the grocery business, but his brother runs a sports podcast with O’Meara’s adult son Conor, who has autism, and Applebaum eventually decided it was his calling.

9:45 a.m.: Minutes to go before the shop officially opens to customers. Christenson is calmly measuring brown sugar for a batch of caramel corn as Schulenberg puts sticks of butter in the giant kettle. “Jane is a caramel expert,” says Applebaum. How is Erickson faring? Things are looking up, she says, as she wipes down a counter where she’s been measuring cups of powdered cheese. Wright, she says, has been a patient instructor, which she calls reassuring.

10:30 a.m.: The first customers trickle in. As Applebaum mans the counter — the shop sells five core varieties of popcorn, and up to three rotating flavors — Wright and the MSS workers are still cooking away.

11:15 a.m.: Lunch time. Christenson, Schulenberg and Erickson bring out their lunch bags, and they’re soon joined by Wright and Applebaum, who are busy talking up the recent Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match. The mood is light all around in the lull between customers, though Christenson recalls the line that formed on Super Bowl Sunday. “That was crazy,” she says with a laugh.

11:45 a.m.: It’s time to get back to work. The group continues cooking until 2 p.m., when Wright shuttles them back to the Ocean Street offices of MSS.