Now marking its 60th year, Valley Sheltered Workshop in Batavia serves adults with disabilities, helping them learn life skills and develop their independence.

Its clients recently participated in its first-ever prom on March 21 – with dresses from CHIP IN Batavia and tuxedos donated by families.

“It’s expensive to be disabled,” Executive Director Hugo Saltijeral said, explaining why it was so important for the event to be without charge. “We had 70 people here and 60 volunteers.”

The prom was his wife, Jessica’s, idea. He got to work on it, and donations covered everything, from the Batavia Moose Lodge as the venue to the dinner, decorations, photographer, DJ, sensory booth, flowers and swag bags.

But before Saltijeral began leading the organization four years ago, he was called to serve the homeless at Hesed House in Aurora, first as a volunteer, then as an associate director for nine years.

By his early 30s, the family was doing well financially – but he wanted a deeper relationship with God.

After Mass at St. Joseph Catholic Church one Sunday, the priest said, “We are short of volunteers at the homeless shelter. Who can go help?”

Saltijeral looked at his wife.

“She looked at me and said, ‘He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at you,’” he said.

He was told to be at Hesed House at 6 p.m.

“There were 100 people outside waiting to get in, smoking and cursing and just craziness,” Saltijeral said. “I was scared.”

Someone in the food line recognized him.

“‘Hugo, what are you doing here?’ ... I was like, ‘Dude, I’m just trying to find God.’ He’s like, ‘Is it working?’ And I go, ‘I think so.’ ... And I spent the rest of that night making everyone in line laugh,” Saltijeral said.

That night, he told Jessica he thought he had found God.

“He’s there with all those people,” he said. “I want to go back. And she was like, ‘All right.’”

“The people I was drawn to the most at the homeless shelter were people that everybody else forgot about. ... Those are the people I love the most,” Saltijeral said.

Two years later, Hesed House was looking to hire an associate director.

Saltijeral resisted.

“I’ll be poor. I don’t want to be poor,” he recalls saying.

“Aren’t we trying to live by faith now?” Jessica asked.

“You’re right,” Saltijeral said.

Jessica said she would have to go to work – and the next day, a temp agency she registered with 10 years ago called to ask if she was still looking for work – something the couple saw as God’s intervention.

One Saturday morning, a man asked for help to stop drinking.

Saltijeral asked if he could wait until Monday.

“‘Hugo, I’m not going to make it to Monday. I wait til Monday, I’m going to go drink again. I don’t know how to wait. I need to go now,’” Saltijeral recalled the man saying.

Saltijeral found the man a bed in the West Loop. Two volunteers sorting mail in the office “threw him in the shower, got him some clothes, threw him in the back of this guy’s car and they took him,” Saltijeral said. “It took that guy two trips and he never came back. He got sober.”

Eventually, Saltijeral created a Rapid Response Team of 40 volunteers to assist when someone needs a detox bed.

“I can’t make you go to detox. I can’t make you get better. But I could ... create an environment where you desire that,” he said.

When Saltijeral was offered the opportunity to serve as executive director at Valley Sheltered Workshop, he took it.

“‘I gotta leave,’” he told Hesed House. “‘God’s calling me somewhere else.’”

But he still volunteers for his church’s PADs ministry and does outreach for Hesed House, as he has done now for 14 years.

Mike Backer, a retired teacher, coach and principal from St. Charles District 303, said he was looking for something to do after retirement when he met Saltijeral.

Backer’s wife is a teacher as well. A parent told her the sheltered workshop was looking for volunteers.

“I can tell genuine, authentic, passionate people when I meet them, and that was what I met in Hugo,” Backer said. “I was ready to join his team immediately. ... I was so inspired by just this genuine level of passion that he has for our individuals who offer so many abilities rather than disabilities, so many senses of success rather than failure.”

Backer praised the workshop’s programming that meets their clients where they are, offering them vocational, academic and social supports.

The prom event brought in state lawmakers, the mayor, police chief, the fire department, local businesses, candidates, as well as parents and leaders of similar agencies, all of whom volunteered for the prom, Backer said.

“I was just looking around the room, and I thought, ‘Who else could pull together these different people as support systems for our neurodivergent in one three-hour night?’” Backer said. “That’s Hugo.”