TEEN CREATES PRODUCE PANTRY
Paige’s Pantry was created to provide job and life skills for Paige Cook and young adults with special needs
“(Paige) likes to work. She works hard, and when she completes a task, she moves on to the next one.” Meghan Hoppes •
When it came time to pick lemons and oranges in a backyard grove on Tuesday, Paige Cook was all business.
The Oceanside teenager, who is on the autism spectrum, quickly pulled on her work gloves and headed straight for the trees. Paige didn’t dawdle or get distracted. She worked at a breakneck pace, clipping off dozens of citrus fruits and dropping them into a plastic crate. Within 20 minutes, the crate was full.
Gardening and picking fruit is one of Paige’s favorite hobbies. It’s also the inspiration for Paige’s Pantry, a new nonprofit started by her mom, Malinda Dalton-Cook. The business aims to distribute produce to the food insecure in North County while providing life, social and job skills to young adults like Paige with developmental disabilities. Paige, who turns 19 on Tuesday, is one of 20 students, ages 12 to 22, at TERI Inc.’s The Country School in San Marcos. She is mostly non-verbal and her curriculum at the school is focused on social and vocational training rather than academics. For each of the past seven years at the Country School, Paige has worked to achieve a series of learning and life-skills goals, including in agriculture. Her teacher, Meghan Hoppes, said that whenever Paige worked in the raised-bed gardens at a TERI group home in Vista, she was always extremely focused.
“Paige is really industrious,” Hoppes said. “She likes to work. She works hard, and when she completes a task, she moves on to the next one. She’s a take-charge sort of person.”
Dalton-Cook said things were