Miss-Delectable

Job success earns deaf worker state award :: News :: PIONEER PRESS :: The Doings ClarendonHills

John Gurga was in the same position many Americans find themselves in these days: laid off and looking for work.

The fact that he's deaf wasn't helping him in the least. Spinal miningitis caused him to lose his hearing when he was 18 months old.

Thus, it was all the more sweet for Gurga to be one of 26 recipients of an Illinois Workforce Development Award Oct. 22 in Springfield.

With help from DuPage WorkForce Net, an organization dedicated to assisting individuals in the workforce, Gurga received additional training as well as his A+ Computing Technology Industry Association certification, which allowed him to find a job two years after being laid off.

Gurga, 30, a recent Clarendon Hills resident and graduate of Hinsdale South High School, lost his job as a junior systems administrator at a company in Ohio in October 2005. For the next two years, Gurga and his wife Christina, who is also deaf, endured a painstaking search for employment, made all the more frustrating by John's consistent need for an interpreter, and numerous companies' failure to provide one, as the Americans with Disabilities Act mandates.

"At times I had to get a lawyer involved because the companies kept insisting that we provide the interpreter," Gurga said. "So I had the layer call the company and explain to them the ADA law."

Gurga recalled a job interview at an Ohio Best Buy in which he and the interviewer communicated via pen and paper. As Gurga wrote his responses down, the interviewer would leave the office and speak to his co-workers. Christina, who was with him for the interview, later told him he read the interviewer's lips as he said bad things about Gurga, clearly indicating he had no chance of getting the job.

Sadly, Gurga and his wife would face similar discrimination at numerous other interviews. Unable to live without government assistance, they lived on Social Security income for two years.

"They were not giving us a fair chance to vie for jobs as a normal hearing person would because they were not treating us as equals," Gurga said.

In late 2007, Gurga was referred to DuPage WorkForce Net in hopes that he might update his skills and obtain some certifications. He enrolled in a week-long workshop that trained him in job hunting and interviewing.

After two years of searching, Gurga was finally hired at Fry's Electronics in Downers Grove on Oct. 22, 2007. He has been there ever since. He primarily fixes damages computers, but also installs operating systems, updates and fixes various computer systems, replaces computer parts, among other tasks.

"John uses the skills he obtained in training every day to achieve not only his personal goals, but also those of the customer and his employer," said Nicole Waterloo, a career counselor for the DuPage County Workforce Development Division who worked with John, and nominated him for the award.

A short time after Gurga was hired, he obtained his A+ certification with help from a grant from the workforce division. He moved to Naperville in March.

Unlike the unprofessional atmospheres he experienced when interviewing, Gurga said his co-workers at Fry's turned out to be surprisingly accepting of his being deaf. In addition to using pen and paper, Gurga can use a computer messaging system, text messaging, as well as lip reading to communicate at his job.

"My co-workers treated me as if I was one of them, and they adapted to me being deaf," Gurga said.

Though he is content to be where he is, Gurga hopes to continue to climb life's ladder of success in the future. He describes himself as "awestruck and proud of myself to know that I am able to do what I've always wanted to do."

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