A lot is cooking at Reality Kitchen.

The Eugene nonprofit organization moved in December from a tiny spot in the Whiteaker neighborhood to much roomier quarters on River Road — the 4,000-square-foot former Wild Plum Pies space.

Husband and wife Jim Evangelista and Catherine Pickup, both longtime special education teachers, founded Reality Kitchen in August 2010.

Their vision was to create an integrated community gathering place where young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who were coming out of the school system could build meaningful, fulfilling lives and learn skills to help them transition to the working world.

“A lot of the students we’ve worked with over the years, after school there wasn’t a whole lot out there for them,” Pickup said.

We spoke with “so many parents who were frustrated and worried about their children — about what their future was going to be like because there really had been no opportunities,” Evangelista said.

The couple said they didn’t know exactly how it would come together or how it would be financially self-sustaining, but they knew that Reality Kitchen was needed.

Reality Kitchen was the name mural painter Evangelista gave his art studio in Gainesville, Fla., which he said became a gathering spot for musicians and artists for several years in the 1980s. He thought the name was perfect for this venture, which also hosts musical and community events.

So the couple quit their jobs with the Lane Education Service District and set to work.

“We literally took an extreme leap of faith into the unknown,” Evangelista said.

As Reality Kitchen moved to the bakery space, the details of how it was going to help young people get job experience and work toward earning their food handler cards came into clearer focus. The financial pieces also are beginning to fall into place.

The two have poured at least $50,000 of savings into the venture and have received help from family members and donors. And they aren’t yet drawing a paycheck themselves.

Two years after they took that leap, state policy started to align with their way of thinking. Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber signed an executive order in 2013 that gradually will channel more money to finding community jobs paying minimum wage or more for people with developmental disabilities and less money to “sheltered workshops,” segregated facilities employing eight or more people with disabilities that pay piece work rates, often much less than minimum wage.

Reality Kitchen has cleared the hurdles to be paid through the state to conduct job readiness assessments. It is certified by the state to provide support services to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And it has filed the paperwork with the state to be certified to provide supported employment or alternatives to employment services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to state regulators of these programs.

Playing to their strengths

Under Pickup and Evangelista’s supervision, a core group of about seven people with intellectual or developmental disabilities — two earning Oregon’s minimum wage — are helping to run a wholesale and retail bakery operation.

Out of the bakery’s large central oven, which is painted like a dragon, workers pull hamburger buns; kaiser rolls; soft Bavarian pretzels; croissants; Danish; loaves of sourdough, rye and raisin bread; and cookies, cakes and pies.

Given the bakery’s past life, and the stream of customers who come in asking for pie, “we make sure to have a couple pies,” Pickup said.

The young workers, with help from some visiting students from local high school special education programs, serve customers, tidy up the shop, do dishes in the back, pack baked goods and make deliveries to customers. Accounts include Agate Alley Bistro and Agate Alley Lab, The Tap & Growler, Toxic Wings, both of the Sam’s Place locations, Sam Bond’s Garage and The Axe & Fiddle.

“Our philosophy is that we really believe everybody can do something, and it’s finding what that something might be,” Pickup said.

Michael Dixon, 23, has worked at Reality Kitchen for three months. He has been a paid employee for the past two months, working 20 hours a week at $9.10 an hour.

Dixon said he’s worked a couple of other jobs in the community, including at a convenience store and assembling bikes. But working in the food industry, “has been one of the first things I’ve had on my mind since high school,” he said.

Reality Kitchen “has been one of the main things that I like doing because I’ve got my hands on food and I work with people I get along with,” Dixon said.

“Jimmy and Catherine are pretty much like family to me.”

Jon Davidson, 23, also recently landed a job at Reality Kitchen working 20 hours a week at $9.10 an hour, minimum wage. He does dishes, packs baked goods and makes deliveries.

Davidson said he had volunteered at FOOD for Lane County, Next Step Recycling and Greenhill Humane Society. Now, he’s looking forward to his first paid job.

Robert Reather, 24, recently staffed the bakery’s front counter with Pickup, where he suggested they add egg salad sandwiches to the lunch menu of soups and sandwiches. He has worked with Reality Kitchen since it started.

“I cannot praise Catherine and Jimmy enough because they’ve done so much for Robert, showing their kindness but being firm and getting to know him so well,” said Robert’s mom, Donna Clark. “They seem to have that patience and the ability to understand people with disabilities.

“I guess it’s showing a respect.”

Clark said she also appreciates this opportunity for her son to be out in the community learning and socializing.

“The bottom line is my son needs to get out,” she said. “He doesn’t need to be in his bedroom 24-7. He doesn’t need to be playing video games or watching TV 24-7. He needs to get out.

“That’s what life is about.”

“It takes a special person”

Don Gott, an ex-businessman with the King’s Table buffet restaurant and a volunteer with the Service Corps of Retired Executives, started last summer helping Reality Kitchen with its business plan and other financial matters.

“They told me a little bit about what they were doing, but I really didn’t understand it until I saw for myself,” he said.

When he did, he said he wanted to be involved. He ended up joining the nonprofit agency’s board of directors.

“They are wonderful with kids,” Gott said. “They have a lot more patience than I think I would.

“It takes a special person to do what they’re doing.”

Other board members include John Beezup, program manager for the Tamarack Wellness Center in Eugene; Ambrose Holtham-Keathley, a Lane Community College nursing student, community activist through the Occupy Eugene movement and volunteer on the Mobile Medical Unit; Jeff Passerotti, executive chef of Rye restaurant in Eugene; and Mike O’Neal, food service director at Lane Community College.

O’Neal said when he first heard about Reality Kitchen, “I was intrigued from the standpoint of being able to order some baked goods and to support a local vendor.

“The more I got into it, I realized the vision they had as far as getting a place where someone can come in with little or no skill and be paid a fair wage while getting the skills to be a viable asset to any business, making sure the given role was right.”

Evangelista is known to many in the community because of his work as a mural artist.

His name also may be familiar to some because in 2004, while a graduate student at the University of Oregon — and during a time of extreme stress in his personal life, Evangelista said recently — he phoned in a fabricated bomb threat to the University of Oregon’s Knight Library. The call shut down the library briefly, forcing the building to be evacuated.

Evangelista said he received counseling, was charged with a misdemeanor, and served four days in jail and a year of probation. The incident was expunged from his record, and he has passed the necessary background checks with the state to work with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, he said.

At various stages of Reality Kitchen’s development, Evangelista and Pickup have received letters of support from Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy; Dave Hauser, president of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce; Lane County Commissioner Peter Sorenson; and Andy Bracco, former program supervisor for Lane Education Service District.

“I’ve known Jimmy for over 10 years, first meeting him when he was a student teacher in my classroom at Cottage Grove High School when I taught there as a special education teacher,” Bracco recently told The Register-Guard.

“I’ve been very proud of Jimmy as I’ve watched him grow his artistic vision into a “reality” (Reality Kitchen that is!). He and Catherine are doing a wonderful job filling a much needed void in our community, to provide real work experience to adults with developmental disabilities.

“I’m very impressed he is able to do so in such a fun, progressive and “hip” way too.”

Follow Sherri on Twitter @sburimcdonald . Email sherri@registerguard.com .