<\/p>\n
By Rebecca Layne
\nJanuary 8, 2011<\/p>\n
Cody Plaster can’t hide his excitement, but it’s difficult for him to express how he feels.<\/p>\n
His face contorts and the words are halting, but eventually they come out.<\/p>\n
“Watch this!” he stammers as he slides an envelope into a mail slot.<\/p>\n
Cody, 14, has mastered mail delivery at Grafton – a private, not-for-profit organization that serves people with a combination of intellectual disabilities and psychiatric disorders.<\/p>\n
Despite his disability, Cody knows how to match the Grafton employee’s name on the mail to the employee’s picture on the mail slot.<\/p>\n
For him, successfully delivering mail is all about the short-term reward – earning a diet Mountain Dew, his favorite drink.<\/p>\n
For Grafton officials, it’s much more than that.<\/p>\n
“Our job, literally, is to give people their lives back,” says Jim Gaynor, Grafton’s chief executive officer and president. “In some cases, that’s saving their lives.”<\/p>\n
“Challenging people”<\/p>\n
The majority of children, youths, and adults at Grafton can’t live in the outside world.<\/p>\n
They’re trapped in their own world – non-verbal. They often have trouble with manual dexterity and can sometimes be aggressive with a tendency to lash out.<\/p>\n
“We’d like to think we can serve the most challenging people,” said Kim Sanders, executive vice president. “Some are the most severe behavioral challenges you could ever imagine.”<\/p>\n
On a Wednesday in January, the statement seems incongruent with the quiet halls of the Ruth Birch Center at 120 Bellview Ave. – the corporate headquarters and an educational facility of Grafton. The organization has about 700 employees and treats about 400 individuals in three locations: Winchester, Berryville, and Richmond.<\/p>\n
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