Good News Sunday: Post-pandemic event puts Gerry's Café back on course

This is Good News Sunday, a compilation of some of the more upbeat and inspiring stories published recently by the Daily Herald:

The bold dream of Natalie Griffin and Amy Philpott to open Gerry's Café, staffed by adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, was making great progress. Then the pandemic arrived in the spring of 2020.

“On March 17, we had a purposeful pause on any active fundraising,” says Philpott, a former president of the Arlington Heights Chamber of Commerce.

“We were slammed like everyone else,” Griffin says. “And I cried a lot.”

It was all smiles Monday as Griffin and Philpott kicked off the inaugural Gerry's Café Golf Classic at Old Orchard Country Club in Mount Prospect, their first major fundraiser of the year. The event sold out in a week, with 144 golfers, 74 financial sponsors and 70 volunteers, including many prospective employees.

Gerry's Café will serve made-to-order breakfast and lunch, coffee and snacks, and offer catering services. Griffin and Philpott hope to provide training and jobs for 40 adults, launch other restaurants, and help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities find jobs throughout the community.

For the full story, click here.

Arlington Heights couple fosters puppies during pandemic

John and Carolyn Roberts of Arlington Heights found an uplifting way to ride out the pandemic: fostering puppies.

At last count, they've fostered more than 50 puppies over the last year, and they're not done yet. They welcomed their latest batch - 7-week-old Labrador Australian shepherd mixed pups - last week.

“When COVID hit, we needed something happy to do,” says Carolyn, who formerly served as co-president of the Palatine Area League of Women Voters.

“There's lots to do,” John adds. “For retired people, it keeps you busy.”

The couple works with the rescue group Fortunate Pooches and Lab Rescue, founded in 2003 by Ileana Cucoc of Palatine. The group is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to saving dogs that are abandoned in shelters and animal control facilities, and providing them with a second chance to be adopted into loving families.

The Robertses are among more than 40 foster families spread out across the Northwest suburbs, but the rescue group always needs more volunteers to keep up with the steady stream of dogs that come mainly from the rescue organization Pet Rescue Arkansas.

For the full story, click here.

New pet owners keeping animals they adopted during the pandemic

Fifteen months ago, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated, would-be pet owners flocked to shelters seeking animal companions.

Though some shelters across the country are reporting an uptick in pandemic pet returns this spring, that does not appear to be the case in the suburbs: Commitments established during COVID-19's darkest period are enduring now that brighter days have arrived, according to local animal welfare experts.

“We were inundated with adoption applications. To be honest, we still are,” said Christina Morrison, director of development for the West Suburban Humane Society in Downers Grove.

During the pandemic's early days, the humane society didn't have enough dogs and cats to fulfill requests, Morrison said. “We were getting 10 applications for every puppy we had at the time.”

Morrison said the animal care team reports that no one has called to surrender a pet “just because the pandemic is over and they want to get back to 'normal' life.”

Gaby Keresi-Uresti, executive director of the Heartland Animal Shelter in Northbrook, said the shelter experienced its lowest return rate during the pandemic, which she attributes to careful screening of potential adopters.

For the full story, click here.

Downers Grove dad takes up figure skating and wins honors

Sitting in the Seven Bridges Ice Arena in Woodridge, cold and bored while waiting for his young daughter to finish her skating lessons, Brian Skeen didn't have enough time to drive home to Downers Grove, zip out to grab some food, or run errands.

Surprisingly, even to him, he did have time to launch a figure-skating career that now has the 50-year-old software engineer competing at this month's U.S. Figure Skating national competition for adult skaters.

“I kind of went 'Monkey see, monkey do.' I watched the kids' lessons very intensely,” says Skeen, who discovered Seven Bridges was giving adult lessons on a different rink at the same time. “I'm going to be here anyway, I might as well take lessons.”

He did so well and had so much fun during a year of group lessons that Skeen also took private lessons. His first individual competition came at the 2020 United States Figure Skating Midwestern Adult Sectionals in Springfield.

Skeen finished second in the adult men's bronze division to win the silver medal with his routine to the song “Send in the Clowns.”

“He just got really into it,” his daughter Nico, 13, says of her dad. “And it's really fun when you have a skating buddy.”

For the full story, click here.

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