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Six students share one goal ... a second chance

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

Here are profiles of the first six students in the Culinary Cornerstones program. A part of Episcopal Community Services in Kansas City, it offers special training in classic French cooking to people who otherwise would be hard to employ.

Big Don was introduced to drugs while playing semi-pro basketball. After he gave his life to God, he worked remodeling houses until his body couldn’t keep up any longer. Then, he says simply, “I became homeless.” He said he only spent one night sleeping under a bridge, but that was plenty. He soon got a job working in a transitional housing shelter and started volunteering at the Community Kitchen, the free hot lunch program Episcopal Community Services runs at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. When he heard about Culinary Cornerstones, he not only applied himself but also recruited three others for the program. He’s active at the Bethany Baptist Church and cooks breakfast there every Sunday.

He said going back to school was hard at age 54. “I hadn’t read anything for 30 years,” he said, but is making progress. “If this program can work for me,” he said to his fellow students, “it can work for you.” He wants someday to be a chef on a cruise ship.

Donovan , 34, the Mountain Dew addict who is bipolar and borderline schizophrenic, was raised by his grandmother who loved to cook and garden. He said he started drinking while in the Air Force. He moved to Kansas City with an ex-girlfriend, and alcohol helped fuel a domestic disturbance that landed him in jail for assault. Now he says he drinks just a little, doesn’t do drugs and doesn’t have a girlfriend. He just wants to go to school and work. “It’s easier to stay focused that way,” he said.

For a while he worked for the state Department of Transportation and often ate at the Community Kitchen. He’d always loved cooking, so when he heard about the program from Big Don, he quickly applied. He loves learning, saying that knowledge is power. He’s working at Le Fou Frog and says he knows he can be successful “if I can keep my ego in check.” He hopes to take a turn at a Japanese restaurant so he can learn to make sushi.

Theresa’s story is the all-too-frequent tale of someone just a few paychecks away from homelessness. She quit a night shift, dead-end job to look for a better one, but her savings ran out before she found one. She gave away all her possessions that wouldn’t fit into her car, and then it died, leaving her, at age 50, in a shelter with no transportation. “I was totally wiped out,” she said. “It’s hard to build up a household and then have to start over.”

She came to the Community Kitchen to eat lunch and heard about the program from the kitchen manager. She’s now in transitional housing and excited about job opportunities. Ultimately she’d like to work in restaurant management. Chef trainer Jessica Bero said with her patience, she’d be good at it. She stays motivated in class, she said, because she doesn’t want to end up back on the street.

Andrew always has loved cooking and as a child said he wanted to grow up to be a cook. His fingers even have scars from ill-fated attempts to chop like the chefs on TV. But an early introduction to life on the streets landed him in detention at age 10. By 15 he was doing drugs, mostly hallucinogenic PCP, and selling them. At age 17 he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter when he killed a man while under the influence. He spent more than seven years in various maximum security prisons, and when he was released, he knew he wanted to stay clear of the streets. A counselor encouraged him to go to cooking school, and soon after that he learned about this program.

At 27, he’s now in drug treatment and is involved with a local church. He likes to talk to kids to try to keep them from making the mistakes he did. He stays motivated in class, he says, because he’s never finished anything before and would like to graduate to surprise his mother, who recently suffered a stroke. He’s got four brothers; one is dead and the others are in prison. He said while watching the “Oprah” show he saw a chef for a fancy Las Vegas hotel who once had been in prison, too. “It’s never too late to turn your life around,” he said.  

Tiffany said she hasn’t suffered the way some of her fellow students have, but she said it often was luck that saved her. “I’ve learned a lot in my 25 years,” she said. “In some situations, it was God’s mercy that I didn’t go to jail or wasn’t killed.” She said she was quite the partier as a teenager and really had to hustle to get enough credits to graduate high school. She tried college but “bombed out” after a year, wasting $13,000 of her own money. She took some classes at community college and then tried fashion school in California before returning home to Kansas City.

She applied for the program after her aunt read about it in the newspaper. She’d already started a little catering business and thought the specialized training would help. She’d given up the party scene (“Been there, done that.”) so was ready to buckle down and study. She’s proud of the fancy birthday cakes she bakes and relishes party planning. “I love to see people having a good time,” she aid. “I love the ambience.”

Mark spent 16 years in prison but doesn’t care to talk much about his life. He said he learned about the program from Big Don and is interested in having a career, not a dead-end job, because at age 47 he wants to earn a decent living. He likes meeting people, he said, and really enjoys learning about food preparation. He’s learned how crucial tasting is, and he knows how important food safety is, too.

He really enjoys class time in the kitchen. “You get to see your work in the final stage,” he said. “We talk about food all day, but to see it….