Keaau business KEAAU, Hawaii >> The strain in Donald Haumea's mind is reflected in his face as he struggles for more than a minute to compose a sentence.
owner cultivates
employees’ talents
Mentally challenged workers
enjoy the fruits of their laborsBy Rod Thompson
Star-BulletinFinally he says clearly, "I am one of the people that does the newspaper fluffing and the field work."
Haumea, 28, of Hilo, is mentally disabled. He is also in training for a job that will make money for himself and his employer, Tom Nelson.
Nelson, 43, of Leilani Estates, established Puna Kamalii Flowers to provide work for his own mentally disabled son Zeb, now 23.
The company collects old newspapers and shreds them as packing material for flower shipments.
Haumea is a trainee who also prepares a field for planting foliage.
It's part of Nelson's vision that mentally challenged people have abilities that can make them money. He expects eventually to supply them as contract labor for plant nursery work.
"We've got to get these people out of sheltered workshops and into supported employment," he says.
Anita Yuskauskas, head of the state Developmental Disabilities Division, said disabled people used to be forcibly segregated. A national disabled rights movement now sees that as wrong as racial segregation.
After two decades as a heavy equipment operator, Nelson suffered a workplace accident in the mid-90s that left him unable to work.
He began a business in his garage, incorporated it in 1998, spent two years looking for a permanent site, and finally was offered two acres by W.H. Shipman Ltd. on the edge of Shipman Business Park in Keaau.
With pension and disability money and volunteer labor from friends, he built a packing shed last August.
The state Department of Labor sent him three trainees.
"They've never been exposed to work," Nelson said.
They didn't know how to hold a shovel. Nelson put duct tape on the middle of the handle so they wouldn't slide their hands down to the blade.
He teaches very basic math. He counts bales of shredded newspaper, "One, two, three, four," and makes the trainees repeat the numbers with him.
"I try to make everything a lesson," he said. "You've got to do it by example. They've got to see you sweat."
"Don't stop moving your body," he tells them. "Don't stop moving your minds."
The trainees love it. One parent called to say her son kept repeating, "Tom Nelson. Work, work. Shred paper."
People are surprised that Nelson's enterprise is a business, not a charity. At least that's the intent. So far he doesn't get paid. He lives on his union pension.
The business is supported by the state in the form of $18 per hour for his son Zeb who works a 19-hour week.
Nelson points out that he pays excise taxes and wage withholdings like any employer. Anything left after paying his son minimum wage goes to pay job coach D.J. Blinn and for other business expenses.
With tax payments returned to the state, the state pays less than the $62.51 per six-hour day it would pay to keep his son in a "sheltered workshop."
"I push them to strive," Nelson said. "If you don't, they just sit in front of the TV and coagulate."