Her
co-workers praise her as a hard worker who comes to work early, fills
in wherever needed, and teaches them basic sign language to improve
communication.
She is also the one who is always smiling, they say, even on the busiest of days at the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Puyallup.
Cassie
Callaway, who has been deaf since birth, has spent the last year and a
half as a laundry attendant at the 120-room facility, which opened two
years ago near downtown Puyallup.
During
a recent work shift, Callaway moved quickly about the laundry room as
she filled washing machines and driers, folded towels, removed laundry
from a chute, sorted linens into oversized blue bins, and fed clean
pillowcases into an industrial strength pressing machine.
The
2009 Rogers High School graduate also frequently moves racks of clean
linens and towels to centralized housekeeping storage areas on different
floors to help prepare for the next set of guests.
Callaway
joined the Fairfield Inn & Suites staff one month before she
graduated from the Puyallup School District’s Advance Program. The
program enrolls 19- to 21-year old students with special needs and
provides post-high school instruction geared toward job training and
employment.
Students learn, for example, how to create resumes and portfolios, do mock job interviews, and zero in on career interests.
Callaway
said the program, as well as her previous education in the Puyallup
School District, helped her to prepare not only how to get a job, but
how to be successful in the workplace.
“The Advance Program helped me to become independent and learn responsibility,” she said.
Callaway
lives in Puyallup and drives herself to and from work, having recently
passed her driver’s license test. She works about 15 hours each week.
“She
has a great attitude, is willing to do whatever she is asked, and
participates in everything our staff does,” said Chuck Valley, general
manager of the Fairfield Inn & Suites. “The staff just loves her.”
So
much so, in fact, that six of Callaway’s co-workers attended her
graduation ceremony to celebrate her completion of the Advance Program
in June 2012.
“We
are just so proud of her,” said Housekeeping Manager Amanda Kampe, one
of those who attended the graduation. “We were all screaming and waving
at her, and she was all smiles.”
Callaway
said she was touched that her co-workers would show up at her
graduation. “It made me feel happy that they were there to support me,”
she said.
Housekeeping
employees use a variety of tools to communicate with Callaway at work,
including sending text messages by phone, writing notes on paper, and
practicing various words or phrases that they have learned to sign.
Kampe
said she most often signs “king” and “queen” (to communicate about
king- or queen-sized bed sheets), as well as motions for common phrases
such as “thank you.”
Callaway’s mother, Sally, said she is proud of how her daughter has grown and matured.
“She
has become very independent,” her mother said. “She is dedicated to her
job at Fairfield Inn, takes the responsibility to get herself to work
on time, and is very willing to work whenever they need her.”
Former teachers also praised her work ethic
“Cassie
always had lots of determination, which I greatly admire,” said Zeiger
Elementary teacher Mindy Noland, who worked with Callaway in the Rogers
High School deaf and hard-of-hearing program. “She has worked very hard
to become the independent, productive adult that she is today.”
Advance Program teacher Lanny Gleason added, “She is just such a pleasant young lady and will be an asset for any employer.”
Callaway’s
future plans including attending college to study movie animation. Her
goal is to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York,
which has nine academic colleges including the National Technical
Institute for the Deaf.