Our student Vance, the guy with dreadlocks behind the counter taking orders and making lattes all these months, has "graduated" and been placed in a job doing food service at Northwestern University.
We gave Vance a send off recently with a cake and a tool box filled with lots of new tools. Vance hopes to do something mechanical one day and own his own business. We hope the tool box, and all the life tools he learned around Curt's Cafe, will give him a step up towards making his dream a reality.
Vance was a hard worker and a natural leader and we all believe in him. So do his peers. On his final day at Curt's we all sat with Vance in a circle and the other students, social work volunteers and Susan took turns telling Vance what they admired about him. It really was touching to listen to the other students say they looked up to Vance and appreciated all the help he gave them when they were new at Curt's.
When it was Vance's turn, he said that one of the things he learned at Curt's was to do things even if he didn't get something out of it -- going the extra step for the customer, teaching another student how to do something, keeping his cool with difficult customers.
We are going to miss Vance, but he has promised to come back to the Cafe on Saturdays, his day off, once in a while, to continue to mentor other students.
