Zoom Group

The Miami Herald: It’s late afternoon on a hot summer day and the cafeteria at Baptist Hospital is buzzing and clanking with workers preparing patients’ dinner trays. Oblivious to the commotion around her, Anastacia Mcloud, in hairnet and gloves, is plopping large spoonfuls of yellow rice, topped by chicken, on plate after plate after plate.

“She’s really in the zone,” jokes her boss, Stan Hodes, manager of dining services. “When she’s doing something, she really concentrates.”

And that’s a good thing. It was her ability to get the work done under pressure that got her the job on the serving line after she interned for four months at the Kendall hospital. Mcloud, 22, of Florida City, is one of a handful of young adults with physical and developmental disabilities who have been given the opportunity to work through the Miami-Dade EmployAbility Network.

Click here to read more.