AURORA | Melissa Minerly’s personality is as bright as the purple scrunchie holding her hair in a ponytail — her vivaciousness is contagious.
She hastily moves from room to room in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit at Children’s Hospital Colorado, diligently stocking drawers with medical equipment for the nurses.
“I want to work here as long as I can,” she said.
By most accounts, the 20-year-old Aurora resident is an ordinary employee, with one exception: she landed her job in spite of her learning disability.
Minerly is a graduate of the hospital’s Project SEARCH, a school-to-work transition program for high school students with developmental disabilities such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and low IQ.
Minerly, who’s saving her paychecks to buy a place of her own, wakes up at 6 a.m. on the days she comes to work, even though her shift doesn’t start until 9 a.m. She puts on her scrubs, puts up her hair, and makes sure she’s on time for the 15L bus.
She flitters around her work with an air of assertiveness, opening and closing drawers, chatting with nurses and staff that adore her.
“She’s a very hard worker,” said Ellen Richardson, patient liaison in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit. “She’s wonderful, and we love having her. She saves us a lot of time and energy.”
She works at the hospital three days a week — days that are marked with the sense of accomplishment she feels knowing her learning disability hasn’t hindered her from obtaining her dream job.
Perhaps the most important lesson Minerly has learned through Project SEARCH is that there’s little she can’t do, even with her learning disability.
“It doesn’t make you a bad person,” she said. “You’re still a good person, you just need a little more help than most people.”
The special education students in Project SEARCH have graduated from Aurora Public Schools and earn internships in various departments at the hospital. They’re exposed to different potential career paths that involve assisting doctors, nurses and hospital officials.
“It really has an amazing impact,” said Marisa Valeras, Project SEARCH coordinator. “Not just on the students that come through the program, but on the hospital, staff, patients and families who see the students who are working and contributing in a professional environment like Children’s.”
Project SEARCH, which used to be an acronym, is a partnership between Aurora Public Schools and Children’s Hospital Colorado, along with other organizations like the Arc of Aurora. It’s modeled after the same program in Cincinnati that was founded in 1996.
Since the program at Children’s Hospital Colorado launched in 2009, it has graduated 20 students, 75 percent of whom are now employed.
The program promotes professionalism, independent living and self-advocacy, and Valeras said she’s witnessed remarkable changes in the students who have completed their internships.
“I think the biggest change that happens is an increase in confidence of their abilities,” she said.
The program is free for students because APS provides a full-time special education teacher and the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation pays for job coaching.
Like Minerly, students in the program had disabilities that made it hard for them to get a job straight out of high school.
“My learning disability is that it takes me a while to understand things, and I usually need to have somebody explain it or show me,” Minerly said. “I’ve pretty much had it since I was born.”
Minerly enrolled in Project SEARCH last summer, after graduating from Aurora Public Schools’ Crossroads Center for special education students.
One of her teachers told her about the program and she saw it as an opportunity to eventually get a job working with nurses and young patients. Minerly said that’s something she had dreamed of since she volunteered at a day care when she was 14 years old.
While her peers learned useful skills in the hospital’s Emergency Department, Special Care Clinic and Anesthesiology Operating Room, Minerly learned the basics of assisting nurses in the post-surgery unit.
“I got to work around the hospital and learn where everything is,” she said.
Just as Minerly learned how to work with the nurses, the nurses learned how to work with her.
“They know about my learning disability and they know that it’s better to show me (how to do something) than try to explain it,” she said.
In April, hospital officials at the post-surgery unit decided they wanted Minerly to be a permanent fixture in the department. Minerly’s job title changed from “intern” to “anesthesia supply tech.”
“I keep everything stocked for the nurses so they can focus on the patients,” Minerly said.
The program taught her independence and to budget the money she is earning, said her mother, Allyson Minerly.
“It taught her things she thought she couldn’t do,” Allyson said.
Reach reporter Sara Castellanos at 720-449-9036 or sara@aurorasentinel.com.