ASHLAND — Three days a week, 25-year-old Curtis Prelipp proudly struts his way through the doors of Claremont Avenue’s Pizza Hut, ready to begin his workday.
Armed with a friendly smile and can-do attitude, Prelipp doesn’t let his blindness get in the way of a productive day. He was hired around a month ago at Pizza Hut to fold pizza boxes.
“I had to come in here and show the boss that I could fold a pizza box” Prelipp said. “And then I had an interview.”
Prelipp’s quickly became a prolific pizza box origamist, at times folding more than 100 boxes in one session.
“He’s very, very good and I’m very, very proud,” said Hugo Nida, Prelipp’s job coach. “He can fold a box in eight seconds.
“We’re a team.”
Nida is a job coach through The Alpha Group of Delaware, Inc. He too has dealt with his own disability, which included him spending four-plus years on dialysis, but now he spends his time helping others, including Prelipp, and making a difference in people’s lives.
Alpha Group is a nonprofit agency that focuses on assisting individuals with any nature of disability or limitation and integrating them into the active job market as well as offering rehabilitation services.
“Our business is in helping people every day and changing lives,” said Chari Shick, North Vocational Coordinator at Alpha Community Services, a Division of the Alpha Group of Delaware. “Our main goal is finding the individual’s value of life and getting them into a provision where they can have long-term employment as well as natural support on the job.”
Shick has been with the company for 12 years and assists Alpha Group in servicing eight counties throughout Ohio including Summit, Medina, Ashland, Wayne, Stark, Richland, Knox and Morrow.
“We really get to know the individual” Shick said. “We start working with them on developing resumes, doing applications.
“We’re trying to matchup a perfect job for those individuals so they do have a long term working experience and employment position and value of life.”
Curtis Prelipp certainly had no complaints when it came to his new occupation.
“I love this place,” Prelipp said “And I love pizza too, especially pepperoni-sausage!”
Prelipp’s work ethic and joyous demeanor is an inspiration to people from all walks of life, proving that anyone can accomplish anything they put their minds too. Those around him who experience his glowing personality can attest to that.
