Cafe 54 in Tucson Is the Real Face of Mental Illness in Arizona, Not Jared Loughner

Shawn Caplan spent two years on the streets of Tucson, sleeping most nights in a tunnel under the train tracks. He woke up every couple of hours. He had nobody -- his parents were gone and even his big brother turned him away. He hung around with the wrong crowd, got involved with gangs.

Finally, Caplan got sick of it and pulled away. He got help at shelters, got a diagnosis for his extreme anxiety and other symptoms (bipolar disorder), and three years ago, he finally got his own place. But he wasn't ready to get a job. He'd done restaurant work before, but he couldn't handle the stress

. "I just gave up a lot," Caplan says. Now he's worked at Cafe 54 for six months. He's done dishwashing and prep work, but his favorite is the grill. He's learned how to grip a knife the right way and cut vegetables. "More importantly," he says, "I've learned about stress."

Caplan's pretty proud of himself. He'd like to be an analyst for the CIA someday. Or maybe go into computers.

"I thought my mom dying was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he says. "But it wasn't. It was taking care of myself."

Ingredients at Cafe 54 are locally sourced when possible. Everything from rolls to quiche to cake is baked on site.

Kimberly Clawson is a job-development specialist at Cafe 54. She's looking for her own job, too. She has a criminal background (she doesn't elaborate beyond that) and she's been working to get her driver's license back and get CPR and first-aid certified.

"I'm making myself more marketable," she says. Clawson came to Cafe 54 in March 2010 and started baking. She hadn't worked in three years. "My stamina was so bad," she recalls.

She worked only two days a week at first; her anxiety was bad. But she got more comfortable and eventually she did food service, made salads, worked the front of the house, and even redid the restaurant's inventory list.

She loves coming to work. "I've only dropped one plate," Clawson says, laughing.

Steve Kraus has worked at Cafe 54 for four months. He runs the cash register and buses tables. His dad heard about the restaurant and told Kraus he should try to get a job there. Kraus had been trying to find a job for years. He really wanted to get a job painting cars. He and his dad restored a 1974 Dodge Dart that they take to car shows.

Kraus got a grant to buy art supplies, and a couple of his pieces are hanging on the wall at Cafe 54; he takes one down to offer a closer look at his technique, which uses paper towel, canvas, rubbing alcohol, and paint to create an abstract design. He just sold a piece. "It felt good," he says, but he would rather draw cartoons.

He lives with his girlfriend, who is on disability. She used to clean houses, but that ended. "She just can't do it no more," Kraus says. The other day, he says, she got really mad at a news story that said mentally ill people shouldn't be able to have guns. Kraus shrugs. "They took mine away so I won’t harm myself," he says.

He likes working at Cafe 54 because "it's real peaceful. It's not like you have someone yelling at you in the back."

And the food’s good, too. "Whenever I have extra money, I get the gyro," he says.