A Pioneering Social Enterprise

A Seattle nonprofit helps former prison inmates get their lives back by putting them to work on big business contracts.

By Karen Epper Hoffman | August 2009 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Through Pioneer Human Services, Michelle Cruzat, a former convict, found meaningful work making cargo liners for Boeing planes.

When Michele Cruzat began piecing her life back together after a five-year-long struggle with crystal meth addiction and multiple arrests, she knew she needed a safe place to live and a decent, stable job.

But with eight felony convictions and more than a dozen jail stays, this former respiratory therapist had good reason to wonder who would hire her. The answer came while she was staying at the residential facility (an alternative to jail for drug offenders) run by Pioneer Human Services. This Seattle-based nonprofit offers a range of employment, job training and permanent housing alongside more traditional wraparound services such as behavioral and drug treatment, short-term and outpatient housing, and transitional housing for recently released inmates. Cruzat began basic job training in January 2008, and shortly thereafter, started working at one of Pioneer’s plants, which makes cargo liners for Boeing Co.

“I worked at proving myself. … It’s been a huge boost for me,” says Cruzat, who since has become an on-the-job trainer and moved to permanent housing in a three-bedroom apartment in one of Pioneer’s buildings in Auburn, where her two children are finally able to live with her.

Pioneer Human Services was founded 46 years ago by Jack Dalton, a former lawyer convicted of embezzlement, who believed the best way to help former convicts and recovering addicts was to provide them decent employment and a safe dwelling. To meet its mission, Pioneer operates as a “social enterprise nonprofit,” says CEO Steve Schwalb. The company generates all its own revenue through its work contracts and rental income.

“We’re completely self-supporting. And the people we serve are learning what it takes to become a stably employed and housed contributing member of society,” says Schwalb, who landed at Pioneer in April 2007 after a 34-year career running county jails and federal prisons.

The programs serve about 12,000 people every year, nearly 300 of whom are program employees. Pioneer has three main enterprises spread across a number of plants and facilities, which, in turn, contract with and support a variety of the area’s largest companies. In manufacturing, Pioneer runs plants where workers make Kevlar cargo liners and fabricate precision sheet metal for Boeing, assemble oven parts for Hobart Food Systems, cut thick metal parts for Genie Lifts and build high-end metal stereo racks for Rane Corp.

Pioneer also runs large warehouses in Kent and Algona that handle packaging and distribution for clients including Nintendo,