A toy oven ignited the desire to become a professional chef in Michelle Harris at the tender age of five. Nineteen years later, the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Youth Program proved to be the catalyst that is allowing Michelle’s lifelong dream to finally become a reality.

“From the time I was little, all I ever really wanted to do was cook,” recalls Michelle, now a 24-year-old student at the Treasure Island Job Corps Center Advanced Culinary Academy in San Francisco. Only the top students from the Job Corps’ numerous local centers and individual culinary programs across the nation end up at the California academy. There are about 1,000 of these students, and Michelle—a Clay County native—is thrilled to be one of them.

Going from Clay County to California is just as big a jump as going from making macaroni and cheese with her mother to making trout with frog-leg mousse under the watchful eye of a cooking instructor, Michelle says. Neither of those jumps would have been possible without the WIA Youth Program bridging her dream with the future she is now working to attain.

“(The WIA) was responsible for telling me about Job Corps and helping me learn what work really meant,” Michelle says, “so the WIA really started it all for me.”

***

Michelle gets settled into her food and beverage class about 8 a.m. each morning. That is almost lunchtime back home in Clay County, due to the three-hour time difference. The change takes getting used to, and Michelle is not quite there yet.

Any small difficulties in adjusting to the time change pale in comparison to the thrill of being where she is. Michelle’s dormitory on the breezy 39-acre island campus is within eyeshot of the historic Alcatraz prison complex in the San Francisco Bay. She also recently spent an afternoon sightseeing in Chinatown. Plus, while Manchester continues to battle the season’s lingering blustery bite, the temperature is hovering somewhere in the mid-60s in San Francisco.

“People here say that’s cold, but that’s hot to me,” she says with a laugh.

“It’s really beautiful,” she continues. “We can come and go as we please after classes, and it’s just a very different, very culturally diverse environment. There’s just so much stuff to do.”

As for her classes, she is working on the most basic of restaurant operations. That includes learning how to set and bus tables, carry serving trays piled high with plates of piping hot food, and ensure dining rooms are properly prepared for any occasion. It is “grunt work,” but Michelle says all great chefs traveled that route as they began their training.

“You don’t start out being an executive chef; you start out doing dishes,” she says. “You have to work your way to the top, and it’s no different here.”

Michelle and the other advanced culinary students work three days per week at the academy’s on-site Fine Dining Restaurant. Patrons pay only $10 for three-course meals like those on the menus at five-star restaurants. Michelle says those people are not just customers; they are also unofficial food critics of the students’ entrees. On any given day, the entrees might include braised breast of stuffed veal, pollo al mattone, or steamed Hawaiian ono with wasabi cream.

“Some days we get good business, and other days it’s a little slow,” she says. “We only had six people in here the other day, but today we had 44.”

For the time being, Michelle can only take part in “front of house” activities like those she is practicing in the food and beverage class. In a few weeks she’ll be into the cooking skills class, and then the fine dining class. Once there, she’ll apply her talents to preparing the restaurant’s meals under the watchful eyes of instructors and a head chef.

“You learn how to cook the way that a fancy restaurant would want you to cook,” she says. “You learn how to do entrees, desserts, pastries, and garnishes, all with a major eye for detail.”

Plenty of work, pressure, and scrutiny lie ahead of her. Michelle still maintains a simple philosophy on why she does what she does, and how she does it well.

“I just like to do creative things that a lot of other people can’t do,” she says. “There’s so much you can do with food and be creative. If it doesn’t look good, it’ll probably not taste good, but if it looks good, you can bet that it’ll more or less taste good.”

***

Michelle graduated from Clay County High School in May 2000. Armed with plenty of confidence and six years of awards and accolades earned with her cooking prowess, she enrolled in the culinary arts program at Sullivan University in Louisville.

Participation in the program carried a steep price—$33,000—that both Michelle and her mother had to take out bank loans to cover. She excelled in her work there, and even got to meet one of her heroes, famed chef and TV personality Emeril Lagasse.

The escalating burden of tuition costs finally forced Michelle to drop out about halfway through the 18-month program. Her only option was to return home to Clay County and re-evaluate her life.

Michelle’s mother, Jean Harris, says the decision was heartbreaking. “It just got the point where I couldn’t afford to borrow more money for her to keep going,” she says. “It was real tough.”

Michelle spent three months searching for odd jobs and other things to keep her occupied. One day, a friend suggested she look into the WIA Youth Program instead.

“I didn’t have anything to lose, so I checked it out,” Michelle says.

The WIA Youth Program offers a broad range of services to young people between the ages of 14 and 21. These services include opportunities for assistance with academic or job-related learning, developing leadership skills, preparing for further education, and eventual employment. The program is administered by the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP), and provided locally through the Clay County JobSight workforce center within the Daniel Boone Development Council in Manchester.

The WIA Youth Program also offers participants opportunities for paid summer work experience assignments with local employers. Michelle says that opportunity sold her on the program.

Lynne House served as Michelle’s WIA career adviser soon after she enrolled in the WIA Youth Program in June 2001. Lynne said Michelle benefited greatly from tutoring that boosted her basic skills. Leadership development activities also showed her how to be a good employee, handle money, and work under supervision.

“It helped me get out there and learn what work really is about,” Michelle says. “It was great to make my own money instead of having to ask Mom and Dad for some when I wanted something to eat or drink. You start being less dependent, and more independent.”

Michelle continued to participate in the WIA Youth Program over the next two years. In that time, she shared with Lynne her dream to become a chef. That dream finally intersected reality in July 2002, following Lynne’s visit to the Pine Knot Job Corps Center in McCreary County.

Job Corps—a partner in the JobSight network—provides residential and non-residential vocational and educational training programs for young adults between the ages of 16 and 24. Lynne and other career advisers visited the Job Corps center to get a look at programs they might be able to refer WIA Youth Program participants to, Lynne said.

As they toured the facility, Lynne and the others were taken into the center’s Culinary Arts program, where they saw the cooking students in action. A revelation struck Lynne.

“The minute I saw that program, I knew it would be a perfect fit for Michelle if she would just do it,” Lynne said. “It was everything she had been looking for. I knew that if she would try it, she would like it and succeed.”

***

Michelle completed the WIA Youth Program in June 2003, but Lynne did not stop helping her. “Actually, I hounded her,” Lynne chuckles. She continued to encourage Michelle in their follow-up meetings to check into attending the Job Corps culinary arts program.

In January 2004, Michelle casually asked Lynne if she still had the information on Job Corps she collected for her a couple of years prior.

“I told her that if she was serious about it, I would set up a meeting with the director of the Pine Knot center,” Lynne says. “But it was clear that she was serious, and she had finally made up her mind that was what she was going to do.”

For Michelle, it was time to start looking forward and stop looking back at her lingering disappointment over leaving Sullivan University. She moved into the Job Corps facility on Feb. 10, 2004, and began her work in the Culinary Arts program right away.

Typical students, Michelle says, take about a year to complete the program. Michelle was hardly typical. Even after helping her primary cooking instructor, Joyce Wood, on side projects, Michelle was able to graduate after only seven months of work.

“I probably could have done it in five,” she says.

Not content to relish that success, Michelle began eyeing her next move. The Treasure Island Job Corps Center Advanced Culinary Academy is that move for local Job Corps graduates like Michelle who want to maximize their potential.

Michelle says Joyce Wood played a pivotal role in helping her focus on how the academy could help her reach her professional goals. She also helped Michelle look past her fears of going so far away from home.

“She told me I was one of the best students who had ever been in the program, and that I ought to go on,” Michelle says.

Encouraged, Michelle chose California, and she began her studies there on Jan. 23. She is still getting used to the time difference, and she is still getting used to the vast differences between Pine Knot and Treasure Island.

Where Pine Knot had roughly 230 students, Treasure Island has about 1,000. “You see somebody new every day, and I like that,” Michelle says.

She also likes the fact that most local San Francisco restaurants will start hiring soon for the summer rush. With a few months of classwork and instruction under her belt, she will be cleared to get a part-time job at one of those restaurants.

“I’ll go wherever I can,” Michelle says. “I just want to keep cooking and keep working.”

***

Michelle has no doubt she will become a professional chef. She remains undecided on where and how she will apply her training once she graduates next June.

Jean says she wants the best for her daughter, even if that means she must permanently trade Clay County for the West Coast.

“The good cooking jobs are in the big city, and we know that,” Jean says. “I just want her to succeed and get one of those good jobs.”

Michelle says she is willing to remain in California, “if I can get used to the time,” she laughs. For a while, she thought about becoming a chef for a major line of cruise ships. Joyce Wood’s sudden death from a heart attack recently has her considering becoming a Job Corps culinary arts instructor. Helping mentor other prospective chefs just as Joyce mentored her definitely appeals to her, she says.

“I think Ms. Joyce would want me to do it, and I think I’d make a good instructor,” Michelle says.

Michelle might not yet have decided exactly where she will end up, but she knows exactly how she got where she is today.

“If not for the WIA Youth Program staff telling me about Job Corps, I’d probably still be sitting at home either working at a supermarket or not doing anything,” Michelle says. “I’m so grateful that they helped me.”